Kamala Harris announces plans to boost voting access

Feb. 28 (UPI) -- Vice President Kamala Harris announced plans Tuesday to boost voting access as she met with voting rights leaders at the White House.

"Today, we gather to lay out a four-part strategy to protect the freedom to vote," Harris said before the closed-door meeting. "To charge every federal agency to do all they can to make sure that every American has the information that they need to know how they can vote when they are eligible."

The four-point plan includes emailing instructions on how to register to vote to everyone enrolled in the Affordable Care Act, and paying students through federal work study to help people register to vote. The plan also calls for protecting election workers, along with three national "days of action" to promote voting.

Those three days will fall on Juneteenth, June 19, the anniversary of the Voting Rights Act on Aug. 6 and National Voter Registration Day on Sept. 17, according to Harris.

"We have seen those who would loudly attempt to interfere in the lawful votes of the American people and attempt to question the integrity of a fair and free election system," Harris said before Tuesday's roundtable in the Indian Treaty Room.

"We have seen a rise in threats against poll workers," Harris said. "In fact, I met some recently in Georgia who had harrowing experiences in terms of how they were threatened, their well-being as well as their livelihood."

Harris also told the voting rights representatives that the Biden administration will continue its work to fight voter suppression laws.

"States across our nation, as we know, have been passing anti-voter laws," Harris said. "The Department of Justice has challenged laws that discriminate such as in Georgia and Texas."

Before meeting privately with the voting rights advocates, Harris also announced that she will be in Selma, Ala., on Sunday to commemorate the civil rights movement and "Bloody Sunday," when 150 state troopers and sheriff's deputies attacked Black voting rights marchers on March 7, 1965.

"Many of us will be in Selma on Sunday," Harris said, "to commemorate Bloody Sunday to remember the great John Lewis and Amelia Boynton and so many others -- to issue a call, yet again, for Congress to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act."