Harris warns voting rights ‘under assault’ as family and activists honor MLK

Vice-president Kamala Harris on Monday warned that the right to vote in America was "under assault" and tens of millions of Americans faced potential disenfranchisement unless threatened voting rights legislation was passed by US lawmakers.

The speech was given on the Martin Luther King day public holiday and comes as King's family and other civil rights activists in America are pushing for expanded federal voting rights legislation despite political opposition from Republicans.

Activists want politicians to pass two measures aimed at expanding voting rights across the country - the Freedom to Vote Act and the John R Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Passing voting rights legislation is seen as crucial in the face of a wave of Republican state legislation that is aimed at erecting barriers to voting that is likely to suppress the votes of communities of color.

Harris delivered strong words - though no new concrete plan of action - regarding fighting off a wave of Republican-led voting rights suppression. She said: "Our freedom to vote is under assault," adding that "voter suppression laws can make it more difficult to vote for as many as 55 million Americans, or one out of six people in the country".

"The proponents of these laws are not only putting in place obstacles to the ballot box; they are also working to interfere in our elections, to get the outcomes they want and discredit those they do not. That is not how democracy works," Harris added.

Martin Luther King III, King's eldest son, his wife Arndrea Waters King and their daughter Yolanda Renee King led a march on Monday morning across the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge in Washington DC.

In a statement last week, King III spoke of his father, who would have turned 93 on Saturday and said that the "stakes could not be higher to protect and expand" his father's legacy of activism and racial justice.