Voices that Inspire

What inspires you from WFSU public media? Here's this week's Voices That Inspire. My name is Jessica Lominer and I'm the Vice President of the League of Women Voters of the United States. I was a senior in high school during the 2000 election and that was a very pivotal moment for me in my life. I actually was astounded as a young person that we could be in a situation where we literally did not know who the winner of the election was. It was just shocking to me that our democracy felt like it was breaking down in key ways. And so then as an adult, when I had the opportunity to work for the League of Women Voters, I still remembered having that experience and was really compelled by the mission of the League. It is a huge year for us as an organization and for me personally. It's a little shocking to think that there are people who are alive today, not many, but there are some people who are alive today who were born before women had the right to vote. So that kind of puts in context how relatively recent it is in our history that women have been able to vote in every state in the nation. But then even more than that, there are still people who are being systematically prevented from exercising that right. There are unfortunately still laws on the books and more and more attempts to pass laws that make it harder to vote. And so while we celebrate the 19th Amendment and the fact that it's been kind of in place for 100 years as an organization, we're very thoughtful about and sensitive to the fact that there's still efforts to prevent people from voting. And we of course want to be and are on the front lines of fighting back against those laws. My name is Jessica Lominer and I'm the Vice President of the League of Women Voters of the United States. You're listening to voices that inspire.