Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday announced a $25 million investment by the Democratic National Committee to support efforts to protect voting access ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
“With this $25 million, the Democrats are investing in the tools and technology to register voters, to educate voters, to turn out voters, to protect voters,” Harris said in a speech Thursday afternoon at Howard University, the historically Black institution in Washington, D.C., where she attended college. “People say, ‘What’s the strategy?’ Well, I just outlined it,” she said.
The announcement comes as Republican-controlled states around the country have passed a wave of restrictive voting rights laws fueled in part by former President Donald Trump’s false claims about the results of the 2020 election and as the Supreme Court voted last week to uphold restrictive voting laws in Arizona.
President Joe Biden has been criticized by some Democrats and civil rights advocates for not taking a more aggressive approach to fighting those new laws after Senate Republicans blocked voting rights legislation last month.
The $25 million will expand the DNC’s “I Will Vote” campaign and will be used to help register and educate voters and will establish the DNC’s largest voter protection team. Some of those functions, like voter registration, are routine for a political party.
