Twenty years after being squeezed out of the presidential debate business, the League of Women Voters is concentrating on voter education, with a blend of online research, registration efforts and voter turnout drives.

It might seem a far cry from the heady days when the League president would introduce the presidential candidates to nationwide audiences. Yesterday, the Commission on Presidential Debates, which supplanted the League's debate role in 1988, faced growing pressure to release copies of a contract signed between the two major party campaigns dictating the terms, conditions and participants in forthcoming debates.

League President Mary G. Wilson was in Pittsburgh to check out things in this battleground state and "see how the League of Women Voters can be useful in that process."

"We've seen a lot of interesting things around the country," said Ms. Wilson, who predicted increased turnout and registration. She said Allegheny County hasn't seen the same large spike in registration.

Possibly, noted Suzanne M. Broughton, president of the Greater Pittsburgh Chapter of the League, the high number of elderly voters might have set the registration baseline so high that, even with the excitement over Democratic nominee Barack Obama, there wasn't much room to grow.

"We have a lot of voters who've been voting since the year one," she said.

The league was created in 1920, months before the 19th Amendment was ratified, and the group quickly became one of the most firmly established voter education organizations in the United States. During the McCarthy period in 1947, they were even called a communist front by Walt Disney, who misspoke during testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He had meant to say the League of Women Shoppers.

After years of buffetings, the group remains active on the political front, with a new Web site, Vote411.org, providing a one-stop shop for voters who want to register, dig up information on the candidates and even locate their polling places.

Unlike the commission, the League has included independent candidate Ralph Nader, who it said met eligibility requirements to be included.

"We posed the questions to the three major candidates and those will appear on our Web site," said Ms .Wilson. The League expects to hear from them by next week's deadline and have their position statements up and available.

Locally, the League is planning to sponsor debates by candidates for Congress in the 4^th and 18^th Congressional Districts.

The League also plans to stay active after the election, intrigued by the flood of new voter registrations and the possibility to keep public interest going in the next election cycle.

"Our challenge is going to be after the election -- keeping them interested in politics," Ms. Wilson said.