Voting rights advocates frustrated by ?same-old, same-old? meeting with White House

Leading voting rights activists came away frustrated and alarmed from what they hoped would be a breakthrough meeting last month at the White House to discuss a strategy to pass federal voting rights legislation.

There were high hopes for the 15 November teleconference between the White House and the leaders of the hundreds of groups that comprise the Declaration for American Democracy (Dfad), many of which have been campaigning hard for federal voting rights legislation. Kamala Harris had agreed to stop by the meeting.

After Joe Biden gave a strong endorsement in late October of altering the Senate filibuster rule for voting rights legislation, the activists hoped that the White House would lay out a course for getting the stalled bills through the US Senate.

Instead, multiple people who attended the meeting said they didn't hear any kind of plan from the White House.

The vice-president, who is leading the White House's voting rights effort, arrived midway through the meeting and read just over six minutes of prepared remarks and then left without taking any questions, according to people who attended.

White House staffers stayed on the call and answered three questions from participants. "They did not lay out a strategy for getting this done," said one person who attended, who requested anonymity to discuss a private meeting.

Cliff Albright, a co-founder of Black Voters Matter, also attended the meeting and said it felt like a "check-the-box kind of a call".