LWVWI Addresses Voter Intimidation Efforts

The League of Women Voters is a leader in the Wisconsin Election Protection Coalition, where voting rights groups and legal partners work to combat voter intimidation. If you hear of anything or experience any voting related issues, including intimidating text messages, please report it to the Election Protection Hotline by calling 866-OUR-VOTE. Recent media stories about intimidating texts:

Run into problems or have questions about the voting process?

Election Protection Hotline: 866-OUR-VOTE | Wisconsin Voter Helpline: 608-285-2141 | Disability Rights Wisconsin Voter Hotline: 1-844-347-8683

Accordion Widget

Recruit Poll Workers

Please spread the word about the need for poll workers – our election heroes! The toolkit below has material you can use to send information to your friends, neighborhood businesses, churches, health clubs – wherever civic-minded citizens hang out. LWVWI 2024-25 Poll Worker Recruitment Toolkits

Accordion Widget

Recruit Election Observers

Training on Oct. 24, 6-8 pm LWVWI and Election Protection recruit observers and publish a report after each election. They are seeking volunteers to be trained as Election Observers and placed in polling places in specific areas around the state. Training is provided, and the program is open to non-members. Observers need to be available to volunteer for a minimum of 2 hours on Election Day. Election observers will also need a cell phone to use while volunteering and their own transportation to and from their assigned polling location. Election Observation Program Goals: to be sure there is no disenfranchisement to monitor the voter experience - including registration and showing ID to monitor the absentee ballot counting process to track any problems that can be fixed for future elections LWVWI training webinar is Oct. 24, 6-8 pm.
Register here. Learn more here.

Accordion Widget

Promote the Facts

Encourage your friends and family to visit the Wisconsin Elections Commission website. The site includes fact checks about rumors, FAQs about election administration, and videos and other information about how elections are conducted in our state.
Talk it up! Another great resource to combat lies and rumors is the Brennan Center's Election Rumors page.

Accordion Widget

Adopt the Equal Rights Amendment

From the League of Women Voters National Website:

"LWVUS has supported and pushed for ratification of the ERA since it was first passed by Congress in 1972. Leagues across the country have worked to engage lawmakers and organize at the grassroots level to ensure equal rights for all, regardless of sex.

Learn more about the Equal Rights Amendment and why it's important.

LEARN MORE

Accordion Widget

Report & Recommendations: Police Policy & Practices in Milwaukee

The Police Accountability and Community Safety Committee (PACS) published a report in Sept 2021 titled "A Clarion Call for Change: Report and Recommendations on the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission".

Learn More Here

Accordion Widget

Statement on Reproductive Rights

The League of Women Voters and the American Association of University Women, each founded more than 100 years ago, are devoted to empowering women to chart their life course. Central to this fundamental freedom is the right to decide if and when to parent – decisions that profoundly impact all aspects of life: physical and mental health, family stability and well being, and economic and educational opportunity and destiny.

The SCOTUS decision is an assault on longstanding, hard-won reproductive rights. It will have far-reaching repercussions for all Americans. The 1849 state law – passed 71 years before women had the right to vote! – does not even have exceptions for rape or incest. This comes at a time when the U.S., compared to other developed countries, is a nation with high maternal and infant mortality rates, a high child poverty rate, no guaranteed access to health care or child care, no guaranteed paid maternity leave, and where two-thirds of minimum-wage workers are women. The right to a safe abortion is also a matter of racial and economic justice, as limits on access to reproductive health services disproportionately impact Black, Brown, and low-income communities.

A pregnant person is not a mere vessel. The course of every pregnancy is unpredictable and carries risks to health and life. Dangerous complications can occur suddenly, when medical decisions must be made quickly. Government has no place in a person’s reproductive decisions, other than to ensure access to affordable, quality health care, including birth control and the privacy to make reproductive choices.

Accordion Widget

Climate and Equity Plan

The League of Women Voters of Milwaukee County enthusiastically supports the City of
Milwaukee’s Climate and Economic Equity Plan. After advocating for its approval at
committee levels and with Milwaukee’s Common Council, we applaud Mayor Johnson’s
signing the Plan in June 2023. The City’s Plan promises to address local inequities and climate change, creating a resilient Milwaukee and helping address the existential dangers already threatening humans and all life on planet Earth.

The League deeply appreciates the work of the City-County Climate and Economic Equity Plan since its inception in 2019. We also commend the City’s current leadership for pushing forward the City’s overarching and visionary Plan. The latter is a workable template for locally addressing climate change and economic equity. It promises to move the City toward an inclusive and economically and environmentally viable future. Finally, we greatly value the City’s leadership; it offers

momentum for adoption of the City-County Plan by Milwaukee County and the County’s 18 remaining municipalities.

Many League Social Policy and Natural Resources positions support the goals of the City’s Climate and Equity Plan. At the same time, the League clearly understands the significant challenges of the Plan:

- reducing community-wide net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 45% by the year 2030 and achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 or sooner.

- reducing racial and income inequality through the creation of permanent living wage
green jobs for people who live in the most impoverished Milwaukee neighborhoods.

The 10 Big Ideas of the Plan summarize its goals and offers solutions to the challenges faced.

The League understands that meeting these ambitious goals will take a practical “all of the above” strategy that includes utilizing existing programs at every level of government, collaborating with electric power interests and committing sufficient financial resources in each budget to these programs.

The thorough, well-conceived 10 Big Ideas of the Plan provide the conceptual nexus to solve many local issues and contribute to the long-term health of our City’s economy and of all the people who live here. We must move now to address climate change and local economic inequities. Time is short! We have a Plan! Let’s move forward with the Plan.

Learn More Here!

Accordion Widget

National Popular Vote Interstate Compact

The National Popular Vote Interstate Commerce (NPVIC) is an agreement among U.S. states to assure the election of the U.S. president by the national popular vote. It will become activated when states that together account for 270 (the majority needed to win) of the 538 Electoral College votes join the Compact. To date, states accounting for 205 Electoral College votes have passed the law, so we are only 65 electoral votes away. If Wisconsin joined the NPVIC, it would add 10 more Electoral College votes (every state has one vote for each of its U.S. senators and members of Congress). In our nation's history, there have been five presidents who won the Electoral College vote, but lost the popular vote. NPVIC ensures that the president is the person who wins the popular vote, and that every vote, in every state, counts the same in electing the president.

Learn More Here.

Accordion Widget

Statement on Redistricting in WI

Learn More Here

Accordion Widget

LWVUS Opposes Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act

LWVUS joined coalition partners to oppose the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require citizenship documentation to cast a ballot, despite the fact that voters in every state are already required to affirm or verify their citizenship status when registering to vote. See letter to Rep. Bryan Steil (WI), Chair of the Committee on House Administration, and Ranking Member Rep. Joe Morelle Here.