For former Vice President Kamala Harris, figuring out how to restore the hobbled Voting Rights Act (VRA) is not something that voters and lawmakers should be focused on right now.
“I honestly don’t believe that it will be any time soon that we are going to revive the Voting Rights Act,” said Harris at the National Urban League conference on Friday. “I don’t believe that is going to be the best use of our energy right now, to try to get that done. Because I don’t know that it’s going to get done right now, the way this Congress is composed and the way they have been treating civil rights issues.”
The U.S. Supreme Court’s Callais decision in April gutted what little was left of the VRA’s core protections against racially discriminatory redistricting policies. After that ruling, Republicans immediately moved to gerrymander congressional maps across the South by severely cutting out what were once VRA-protected majority-Black and Latino districts.
In a conversation with Urban League President Marc Morial, Harris said she was still “hopeful” that the VRA could be restored at some point. Tennessee, where the National League conference was held, was the first state to redraw its U.S. House map after Callais to get rid of its only majority-Black district. {read}