Kamala Harris has promised to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. What is it, why has it stalled in Congress and how could it affect voters?

Kamala Harris’s promise to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act was amplified by Alabama Rep. Terri Sewell on Tuesday night, as the congresswoman highlighted the state’s pioneering history in the civil rights movement on night two of the Democratic National Convention. The bill would modernize the 1965 legislation that was created to block racial discrimination in voting.

“Kamala Harris will protect the legacy and the progress that we’ve made by our forefathers and our foremothers and she will advance it,” Sewell, the first Black woman elected to represent the state’s Seventh Congressional District, said during Alabama’s roll call. “She will safeguard our freedom to vote by passing the John Robert Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.”

Earlier in August, Harris shared a photo of herself admiring the late Georgia Rep. John Lewis, for whom the bill is named. "Our democracy is only as strong as our willingness to fight for it," the Democratic presidential nominee wrote on X.

The Democrat-sponsored bill, which has stalled in Congress, would strengthen voting rights and legal protections for those who head to the polls.

What is the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act?

The bill was originally titled the Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2019, but was renamed after Lewis in 2020 to honor the civil rights veteran who fought for voting rights.

The legislation would restore the critical preclearance requirement section in the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that was gutted by a 2013 Supreme Court ruling, Shelby County v. Holder.

The preclearance requirement in the Voting Rights Act mandated that states and local jurisdictions with a history of racially discriminatory voting practices get federal approval before making changes to their election process that could affect voting rights and spur discrimination.

Patrice Willoughby, NAACP’s senior vice president of global impact and policy, told Yahoo News that the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would modernize what the Supreme Court decision ruled was an outdated “formula that determines how and which states have a pattern of discrimination.”

After the 2020 election, battleground states including Georgia and Florida enacted voting restrictions such as implementing stricter voter ID requirements, banning volunteers from handing out food and drinks in voting lines, limiting access to voting by mail and creating a more complicated voter registration process, citing concerns of voter fraud, which is a rare occurrence.

A 2021 analysis by the George Washington University Law School suggests Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas, states with historically large Black populations, would be subject to the preclearance requirement based on past violations.

How would the act affect voters?

Civil rights organizations say the legislation would eliminate racially discriminatory roadblocks put in place by Republican-led states like Georgia and Florida that have enacted voting restrictions in recent years. These changes "disproportionately impact communities of color in the United States," a version of the bill states.

“It is anti-democratic for any party to try to limit access to what is the right of every American,” Willoughby said, adding that Harris’s X post on securing voting rights “and also the emergence of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act is an effort to restore the fair play that democracy really requires.”

In addition to restoring preclearance, the act would, among other things:

Make Election Day a public holiday.

Limit removing voters from voter rolls.

Expand voter registration including same-day and automatic registration.

Expand voting access to include early voting and vote-by-mail options.

Mandate officials to publicly announce voting changes at least 180 days before an election.

Enable the government to dispatch federal observers to polling places with a noted pattern of discrimination.

Rein in campaign donations by expanding restrictions on campaign spending by foreign nationals.

Ban partisan redistricting.

Make it a criminal offense for people who “corruptly hinder, interfere with, or prevent another person from registering to vote or helping someone register to vote.”

In 2021, Harris was tasked with taking the lead on restoring voting rights, She's convened with voting rights leaders, including the NAACP, to gain support for strategies aimed at protecting voter rights.

She said the Biden administration "will not stand by when confronted with any effort that keeps Americans from voting. We must protect the fundamental right to vote for all Americans regardless of where they live."

Willoughby explained the restrictions make voting more difficult for minority communities who lack resources or who may have "any characteristic that is identified as being someone who might vote for progressive causes," as shifting demographics reveal a deeply divided democracy.

Democrats declared in their 2024 party platform that the fundamental right to vote "remains under assault." The party vowed to pass and sign into law the act "to fully secure the right to vote in every state, ensure fair congressional maps for every American, modernize and secure our elections, and curtail the corrupting influence of money in politics."

“If [former President Donald Trump] returns to the White House, he will seek to eliminate early voting and mail ballots to make it harder for Americans to exercise their right to vote,” the party platform read.

On Tuesday night, Georgia Rep. Nikema Williams, the state’s Democratic Party chairwoman, also invoked Harris’s fight for the “freedom to vote,” in the “spirit of good trouble,” a nod to one of Lewis’s most recognizable calls to action.

“Extremists in Georgia are trying to silence our voices by kicking Georgians off of the rolls and making it harder to vote,” Williams said. “When we send Kamala Harris to the White House, she'll fight for our freedom to vote.”

Why has legislation stalled in Congress?

House lawmakers passed the bill along party lines in 2021, but it failed to advance in the Senate.

That Senate vote was the fourth time in 2021 that Republicans blocked voting rights reform.

Democrats have since reintroduced different iterations of the law, including combining a broader voting rights bill, the Freedom to Vote Act, with the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act in 2021. The most recent bill was introduced in February 2024, but there's been no notable movement in the chambers.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell dismissed the legislation as a “go-nowhere bill.”

“There is nothing to suggest a sprawling federal takeover is necessary. Nationalizing our elections is just a multidecade Democratic Party goal in constant search of a justification,” McConnell said on the Senate floor.

In a 2022 memo to the press, Republicans slammed the Democrats' push to pass the law as "fake hysteria."

“The political left keeps pitching their Big Lie that mainstream state voting laws are somehow ‘Jim Crow 2.0’ if the Governor who signs the bill happens to be a Republican. The left’s Big Lie insults the intelligence of the American people,” the memo read.