It was a day out for stay-at-home moms who came of age in the caldron of the 1960s. We'd call it a "play date" or "Mommy's group" now - but with policy discussions and get-out-the-vote campaigns rather than gossip.

Baby sitters aren't necessary at League meetings anymore. Those young activists are now graying, their children grown. And their numbers are dwind-ling - through attrition.

The League is in trouble. And women are to blame.

An offshoot of the women's suffrage movement, the League was organized in 1920, after the U.S. Constitution was amended to allow American women the right to vote. The League kept them going to the ballot box.

But League membership peaked in the 1970s and has been falling ever since. In 1974, the League allowed men to join. It didn't help. Nationally, the League claimed 170,000 members. That number has dropped to just more than 100,000. In Utah, League rolls have been cut nearly in half, from 600 members 30 years ago to 350 now.

After 87 years, we've started to take that 72-year fight to vote for granted. With voter turnout in presidential elections hovering at just over 50 percent for the past 20 years, it's clear that women stay home on Election Day - just like men.

We've come a long way, baby. We've just forgotten how we got here.

Sandy Peck started going to the League's Salt Lake City meetings with her children. Now, the 73-year-old volunteer executive director spends day after day at the Utah Legislature, quietly taking notes. She speaks up only to advocate for radical notions like voter rights, public meetings and access to government records.

One of the last nonpartisan, grassroots, government-watchdog groups remaining on Capitol Hill, the League focuses its attention on voter education, producing "white papers" on hate crimes legislation, alternative energy and redevelopment law. They prepare a daily legislative update for public radio station KCPW. And each election year, League members draft a voter guide and moderate debates.

Most of the time, Peck and other League members are summarily dismissed with a platitude - "What nice old ladies."

Still, she goes back year after year.

"It's hard for me to be detached," she says.

Intellectual stimulation hasn't been enough to draw in new members.

Thirty-something Melissa Larsen figures she's the League's youngest member. She was recruited by her 71-year-old aunt. "I was pretty disillusioned. They're all much older than me," she says.

Meetings these days always include a moment of hand-wringing about recruiting new members. They understand more young mothers are working these days, trying to juggle soccer games and swimming lessons and dinner. Another meeting just won't fit in that after-work dash - even in a state that was one of the first to give women the right to vote and where League founder Carrie Chapman Catt spoke in the Mormon Tabernacle so many years ago.

No real people answered the League phones in Washington, D.C., Monday. The Utah League's Web site still features the obituary of a member who died in March.

"You can do nothing or everything," the 77-year-old Salt Lake League Co-President Joyce Barnes offers, as an incentive to join.

So, I printed out the League membership form - available at www.lwvutah.org. I'm going to scrape together the $50 membership dues.

I might be one of the members who does nothing for awhile. But I'll be there.

walsh@sltrib.com