Vice President Kamala Harris appeared to take a swing at GOP lawmakers for making it harder to vote during a Saturday interview with Al Sharpton.
“I recognize that when people make the effort to register to vote, to fill out that ballot, to go to the polls and vote, it is an effort that we should appreciate and be thankful for when they make it,” Harris said in the interview on MSNBC. “I’m worried about it because I also know that there has been a lot of effort and laws that have been passed to try and make it more difficult for people to vote.”
In the years following the 2020 election, Republican lawmakers have passed several pieces of legislation to tighten up voting requirements. In 2021, a law that passed in Georgia received large amounts of scrutiny for its content, including new barriers when it comes to the absentee-ballot request period and prohibitions on providing food and drink to voters in line to cast their ballot.
“In the United States of America we went through all these fights, the March on Washington… all that,” Harris said “And these so-called leaders who are so bold as to unapologetically propose and pass laws to make it more difficult for the American people to vote. The gall?”
The election reform laws include implementing measures like shortening the time period during which a voter can request a mail-in ballot, limiting the number or availability of mail ballot drop boxes and removing inactive voters from the rolls, among other things. A large number of these laws are aimed at increasing in-person voting after mail-in voting spiked during the 2020 election as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.