Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Harris was ridiculed online for requiring rally-goers to show government-issued identification to enter her rallies, despite her opposition to voter ID laws.
Ahead of a rally in Arizona on Friday with vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, Harris’ campaign sent out an email saying only RSVPs would be allowed in.
The email said that anyone on the RSVP list would have to show matching government-issued photo ID to enter the venue, KTAR reported.
The exact location of the Phoenix-area election event, first announced on July 30, was not revealed until Thursday. According to KTAR, the email stated that the event would be held at Desert Diamond Arena, 15 miles northwest of downtown Phoenix, and that attendees could enter between 1:30 and 3:30 p.m. on Friday. The Arizona Democratic Party reportedly plans to email “non-transferable invitations” to attend Friday’s event on Thursday afternoon.
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Vice President Kamala Harris appears at a packed rally in Glendale, Arizona, on Friday, Aug. 9, 2024. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
X users began sharing screenshots of the email and slamming Harris for her hypocrisy.
“Voter ID is racist but you can’t get into a Kamala rally without ID,” actor Kevin Sorbo wrote to his 2 million followers.
“So just to be clear, requiring ID to vote is racist… but requiring ID to attend a Kamala Harris ‘rally’ is not racist?” Nick Soter wrote to his more than 448,000 followers.
“You need photo ID to get into the invite-only Kamala Harris event but not to vote?” another user, Ian Howarth, chimed in.
“Kamala Harris requires photo ID to enter a private campaign event. Kamala Harris doesn’t want to require photo ID to vote. Kamala Harris doesn’t want to require ID before crossing the border. Weird,” political commentator Gunther Eagleman also wrote on X.
Fox News Digital reached out to Harris’ campaign for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
In 2021, Harris gave her first interview as vice president with BET’s Soledad O’Brien about changing voting laws.
“I don’t think we should underestimate what it means to have a voter ID law,” Harris said of the introduction of voter ID laws, “because some people think they have to prove who they are by copying their ID and sending it in. But a lot of times, people don’t have ID, especially people who live in rural areas, because they don’t have a Kinko’s or an Office Max or whatever nearby. People have to understand that when we talk about voter ID laws, we need to be clear about who we have in mind and what it is that they need to prove who they are.”
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign event near Phoenix, Arizona, Friday, Aug. 9, 2024. (Rebecca Noble/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“Of course people have to prove who they are, but not in a way that makes it nearly impossible to do so,” Harris added.
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In August 2020, shortly after then-presidential candidate Joe Biden selected Kamala Harris as his running mate, Harris penned an op-ed for The Washington Post about the 100th anniversary of the adoption of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the constitutional right to vote.
“But not for Black, Latino, Asian, or Native American people,” Harris wrote, “and when the 19th Amendment was finally ratified, Black women were left behind again. Poll taxes, literacy tests, and other Jim Crow voting suppression tactics effectively prevented most people of color from voting.”
Supporters cheer during a campaign event with Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Friday, Aug. 9, 2024, in suburban Phoenix. (Rebecca Noble/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The vice presidential candidate at the time tried to draw a modern-day comparison.
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Harris accused Republicans of “once again doing everything in their power to suppress and attack the voting rights of people of color.”
“They are deploying repressive voter ID laws, racially biased districting, voter roll purging, polling place closures, and shortening early voting days – all of which have targeted communities of color since the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013,” she wrote.
