Here is an article about the press statement of the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania, responding to threats against the League by the current Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Last week the League had filed a federal lawsuit, charging the Pennsylvania Supreme Court with bargaining with the Pennsylvania legislature over lawsuit outcomes and the pay raise bill for judges. In return, the current Chief Justice had threatened that the League might be subjecting itself to sanctions. The League’s press release charges the Chief Justice with violating the right of citizens to petition their government.
The Pennsylvania League of Women Voters has consistently invited all ballot-qualified candidates for statewide office into candidate debates that it sponsors. It is one of the most friendly state Leagues, relative to minor parties and independent candidates.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has continued to support a system in which minor party and independent candidates who try to get on the ballot, and then fail to submit enough valid signatures, must pay tens of thousands of dollars to pay for the cumbersome judicial process that removes them from the ballot.
Go PA League of Women Voters! This states’ ballot access laws are as bizzare as the liquor laws! It is good to see a mainstream organization taking up the challenge.
tangentially; wasn’t the LWV originally begun to end prohibition of alcohol? Or is that a myth they use to recruit members!
No, it emerged out of the Suffrage movement around the passage of the 19th amendment.
If anything, the early LWV leaders would have supported the prohibition movement, since the two reforms marched forward hand in hand. At the time, women overwhelmingly supported prohibition.
That’s true. The temperance and female suffrage movements were closely related. In fact, I believe it was the Prohibition Party that first advocated female suffrage in a platform (upon its founding, in 1869). Correct me if the Free Soil or Liberty parties beat them to it, however. In any event, the Prohibition Party, which has been one of the most conservative political parties in US history, was strikingly progressive in the 19th century because of its positions related to temperance and, thus, the general welfare and status of women.
Yes, for example if you look at the prohibition and socialist party platforms (WI) of 1932, they shared many common issues. The one disagreement was of course temperance, the Milwaukee Sewer Socialists took their constitutional right to beer (what else could the pursuit of happiness refer to)rather seriously.
FYI, just a few years ago the Prohibition Party elected a candidate to a township level office in western Pennsylvania.