That question recently appeared in a letter to the editor of one of our local papers. The writer's argument went something like this: the League of Women Voters says it's nonpartisan, but it takes positions on real political issues — so which is it? Nonpartisan, or political?
The honest answer is: both. And that's not a contradiction — it's the whole design of this organization.
Two Different Words, Two Different Questions
“Nonpartisan” and “political” answer two different questions, and it's easy to blur them together.
Nonpartisan answers the question: whose side are we on when it comes to candidates and parties? Nobody's. The League has never supported or opposed a political party or a candidate for office, at any level of government, since our founding in 1920. That's not a slogan — it's written into our bylaws and it governs everything from our voter guides to what League leaders can post on their personal social media. As the League's national guidance puts it plainly: “The League shall not support or oppose any political party or any candidate.”
Political answers a completely different question: do we engage with public policy? Yes, absolutely. We study issues, we form positions, and we advocate — sometimes quite forcefully — for or against specific policies, legislation, and ballot measures. That's political work in the truest sense of the word: it's about the polis, the shared life of the community.
So when the letter-writer says “you claim to be nonpartisan but you're political” — they're right that we're political, and right that we're nonpartisan. They're just treating those as the same axis when they're not.
Why We're Never Confused for a Party
Here's the part that actually answers the accusation: a political party exists to win elections and hold power. Its positions can shift depending on which candidates it's trying to elect or what a given election cycle demands. The League doesn't work that way, and never has.
We don't take our positions from a candidate, a party platform, or whoever happens to be popular that year. We arrive at every position through study — members read, research, hear from experts on multiple sides of an issue, and then talk it through together. A position only becomes an official League position when members reach agreement on it through that process. If a political party later shifts its stance on an issue where we've already taken a position, we don't shift with it. We don't work backward from “which side would this help” — we work forward from “what does our research and our membership actually support.”
That's also why it doesn't make us partisan when a particular candidate or party happens to agree with a position we've held for years. We didn't move toward them. If anything, it can be the other way around.
The Real Engine: Grassroots Democracy
This is the piece that's easy to miss from the outside: our positions aren't handed down from a board, a headquarters, or any single leader with an agenda. They come up from members, through a deliberately slow, deliberately democratic process of study and consensus. A local League studies an issue, brings it to its members, and adopts a position only after there's genuine agreement. State and national positions work the same way, built up League by League. That grassroots structure is precisely what keeps us from becoming a vehicle for anyone's personal politics — including any one member's, or any one party's.
It's worth remembering, too, that the League has always encouraged its own members to be politically active as individuals — to join a party, campaign for a candidate, run for office themselves. Nonpartisanship is a discipline the organization holds itself to; it was never a demand that members have no political lives or opinions of their own.
Fact Over Allegiance
There's one more mix-up worth clearing up: “nonpartisan” is often heard as a synonym for “neutral.” It isn't. Neutral means taking no side on anything. Nonpartisan means taking no side on candidates and parties — while still taking clear, sometimes forceful, sides on issues once our members have studied them. We're not neutral about voting rights, government transparency, or the issues we've adopted positions on. We're just not taking those positions to help a party or a candidate win.
Being nonpartisan has never meant being neutral about facts, or timid about advocacy. It means our loyalty runs to the issue and to the voter, not to a party or a candidate. In a moment when almost every stance gets sorted instantly into “which side is this really for,” that distinction is harder to explain than it used to be — but it's exactly the same distinction the League has held since 1920.
So the next time someone puts that question to you — nonpartisan or political? — the honest answer is the League's answer: yes.