Vice President Harris attends voting rights roundtable in Atlanta

ATLANTA — Vice President Kamala Harris visited Atlanta on Tuesday for an event focused on voting rights across the United States.

She held the roundtable discussion alongside voting and civil rights advocates and Congress members.

“We have a lot of work to do,” Harris said during the event. “The attacks are clear. There is, I believe, a full-on intent to attack fundamental freedoms and rights.”

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The vice president’s visit to battleground Georgia comes after a federal judge ruled that mass challenges to voters’ eligibility did not violate federal law.

A judge also ruled to uphold GOP-drawn political maps that preserved Republican majorities in both chambers of the Georgia General Assembly.

“What is happening in the country... anti-voter laws, laws that limited drop boxes, have made it illegal to even provide food and water to people standing in line often for hours,” Harris said.

However, in August 2023, a federal judge ruled that providing water and food to those waiting in line was, in fact, allowed.

In a statement, the Chairman of the Georgia Republican Party wrote, in part:

“Hopefully Vice President Harris will use her time in Atlanta to acknowledge that the dangerous and inflammatory rhetoric used by the Biden administration about common sense voter integrity reforms were mistaken.”

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7th Congressional District Rep. Lucy McBath said, “Make sure that as we go forward that people do have the ability to exercise what’s important to them and that’s the ballot box when they vote.”

Harris said, “When we look at the state of Georgia, it is ground zero on this issue.”

In a statement, the secretary of state accused the Biden administration of pushing election misinformation.

The vice president said she would return to Washington D.C. and compel Congress to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.

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