Kamala Harris Is the Democratic Presidential Nominee — Here’s Her Record on Voting Rights
During her time as vice president, Kamala Harris has taken the lead on the White House efforts to protect voting rights.
President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Harris. Here’s her record on voting rights in the Biden administration and in her career as a senator.
Harris has met with Native Americans and people with disabilities multiple times from 2021 to 2023 to discuss how to break down their barriers to voting and explain what the White House’s efforts look like to achieve this goal.
This includes an event in March 2022 to commemorate the first anniversary of Biden’s Executive Order on Promoting Access to Voting — during which she invited numerous advocates and community leaders to share their perspectives.
During her remarks, Harris said that “it will continue to take an all-hands-on-deck approach to protect our democracy,” and “together, with your help, I know we can safeguard and strengthen the freedom to vote for generations to come.”
In September 2023, she launched a nationwide “Fight for Our Freedoms College Tour,” where she traveled to campuses around the country to mobilize students to fight for their rights — including their right to vote.
In January, she hosted an event to discuss the voter suppression efforts in Georgia, which she highlighted as “the home of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the home of John Lewis, of Andy Young, and, of course, many of the leaders who are at this table.”
Then, in February, she outlined the White House’s four-part strategy to protect voting rights, describing voting as “a fundamental freedom that unlocks all the other freedoms.”
For this strategy, she said the Biden administration would instruct federal agencies to inform Americans on how to vote, allow students to get paid to register voters and be poll workers through federal work study, create the Election Threats Taskforce to train officials on protecting election workers and fight voter suppression laws in court via the U.S. Department of Justice.
Over the past few years, Harris also repeatedly urged Congress to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act — which she was a co-sponsor of as a California senator in July 2020.
She also made another contribution to voting rights in the Senate that year. In May 2020, she introduced the VoteSafe Act to make it easier and more accessible for voters to cast their ballots during the pandemic, which stalled in the then-Republican-controlled Senate.
At the time, Harris explained in a statement that the bill specifically focused on aiding communities that have historically struggled with access to the ballot box.
“It is critical that we meet voters where they are and ensure that all forms of voting are safe and accessible,” Harris said.