Champaign County’s League of Women Voters prepares to celebrate 100 years of service to the community in October.
While the Champaign County group is just one of many sub-divisions of the league, it was formed two years after the national league, founded in 1920 in a city not too far from this one, Chicago, Illinois.
Founded by the women’s suffrage movement, the group’s main focus and goal was to encourage women to vote with the belief that women having the ability to vote could, “create a more perfect democracy.” However, the group is and has always been open to all genders and encourages everyone to vote.
While the national league celebrated 100 years in 2020, the Champaign County division celebrates 100 years this October. The Prospectus got the chance to speak with a representative in the group about the Champaign County division, Rhonda Kirts, on Tuesday, September 13th, when the group came to Parkland to register students and share the importance of voting during Constitution Week.
Kirts has been a member of the league since 2019 and as a member, she is a part of the Voters Registration team as well as the co-chair for the Youth Outreach and Civic Engagement team, a group designed to get senior year high school students and students at the college level to vote.
Part of that civic outreach is through a program that emboldens young students getting close to the age to participate in our nation’s democratic process.
This program gives students the chance to become Student Ambassadors for the program where their job is to encourage their fellow peers to follow them in sharing their voice during elections.
Kirts shared the process of how easy it is to actually become a registered voter. Not only can you do it in person at a league event but you can also go to ova.elections.il.gov and register online.
Most of the work that Kirts does for the organization is focused on the main focus of our country’s democratic process. For those who might wonder why Kirts chooses to do what she does, Kirts says, “this age group will make the difference.”
Something Kirts said in regard to why she believes in today’s youth, sounds similar to the reasoning of the women who founded the group a hundred years ago.
“Elections can be decided by as few as one vote.”
Back in 1920, women were fighting for their voice, their vote to be heard. Today, Kirts and the League of Women Voters extend that fight to us, to find our voices.
To learn more about the history of the LWV you can go to their website at lwv.org or you can go to the Champaign County division’s page at lwvchampaigncounty.org.
*The League of Women Voters will also be returning to Parkland on Tuesday, September 20th for National Voter Registration Day in the Student Union and X-wing from 11am-2pm to register people to vote and to answer any questions.