Former Vice President Kamala Harris urged Democrats to mobilize voters in record numbers and open debates on major institutional reforms during a speech Friday at the National Urban League convention in Nashville.
Addressing the audience ahead of the upcoming midterm elections, Harris focused on voter registration and changes to voting access following rollbacks to the Voting Rights Act.
She warned attendees to check their registration status for potential purges and to verify their polling locations before election day, pointing out that shifting voting sites can disrupt long-standing voting habits.
Harris told the crowd that high participation is necessary to counter efforts aimed at undermining elections, urging supporters to make the upcoming vote “too big to rig.”
“Part of it is these midterms are coming up and it will make a decision about who at least rules the House, if not the Senate,” Harris said. “Registering folks to vote and having an agenda that is about turning out the vote in the greatest numbers we have ever seen so that in light of and in this environment where they are cheating, we will be too big to rig.”
To achieve that level of turnout, Harris called on Democrats to take a more aggressive stance, while clarifying what she meant by the approach.
“It means being ruthless. They are ruthless. We need to be ruthless too,” Harris said. “And by that I do not mean cruel. That is not our nature. By that I do not mean breaking the law. That is not what we do. But I do mean we must be uncompromising.”
In addition to voting strategy, Harris proposed revisiting several fundamental aspects of the U.S. government and judicial system, acknowledging that her remarks would draw debate.
“I know this is going to be controversial coming from me in particular, we need to revisit the Electoral College,” Harris said. “We need to revisit the point of expanding the court to 13 justices, like we have 13 district courts. We need to revisit, if they so want, statehood for Puerto Rico and D.C.”
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