Kamala Harris said she is “thinking about” running in the 2028 presidential election.

“I might, I might. I’m thinking about it,” the former vice-president and 2024 candidate told the crowd at a gathering of the National Action Network (NAN), a civil rights organization founded by Al Sharpton, on Friday in New York City.

Expanding on her response to Sharpton’s question about a potential presidential bid, she added: “I served for four years being a heartbeat away from the presidency of the United States … I know what the job is and I know what it requires.”

She said: “I’ve been traveling the country the last year, spending a lot of time in the south and many other places, and the one thing I’m really clear about is … the status quo is not working and hasn’t been working for a lot of people for a long time.

Speaking about the presidency, Harris added: “It’s got to be about the American people and that’s how I think of it. I am thinking about it in the context of … who and where and how can the best job be done for the American people. I’ll keep you posted.”

Harris, who lost to Donald Trump, also criticized the president and the increasing erosion of the US’s global alliances, saying he was the “first president of the United States since world war two who does not believe in the alliances that we have with friendly nations … and the importance that that relationship bears on our standing around the world”.

Addressing the US’s war on Iran, Harris called it a “war of choice”, adding: “While he struts around boasting about how he will annihilate a whole people, what he is in fact doing … is making us weaker, unreliable and less influential.”

Harris also warned against the erosion of voting rights across the US, saying: “They have been doing the work for years of building a supreme court that is configured as we now have it, and they’re about to make a decision on section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.” She was referring to the clause requiring lawmakers to consider race when necessary to ensure fair representation of racial minorities.

“I am sad to say, I do believe they are going to kill it, and that will mean that the legal tool that we have to be able to litigate in a court what are clearly racist-influenced laws to prevent certain people from voting – we’re going to lose the tool that we have had before,” she warned.

Harris went on to urge voters to “make sure that they check right now their voter status”, adding: “Don’t wait until election day to see if, for example, your name got purged from the rolls.”

She continued: “Ask today for folks to check on their polling location, because part of this shell game they’ve been playing includes closing the place where your mother and your grandmother always voted, so that on election day she’s going to that local elementary school to find out it’s not a polling place any longer – so let’s do some of the work right now.”

In interviews since leaving office, Harris has not ruled out another presidential bid. Sharpton recently told Politico that Harris is an “absolutely a potent force in the Black community” and that he believes that “she has been ignored, and we’re going to raise that at our convention”.

Harris is also set to appear at a fundraiser for the South Carolina Democratic party next week.

Harris’s appearance came as several of the Democratic party’s most prominent figures – and potential 2028 presidential contenders – have also taken the stage alongside Sharpton at the NAN’s annual multi-day convention this week, where they have participated in discussions around the upcoming midterms, the issue of affordability, the war in Iran and the future of the Democratic party.

Elected officials who have spoken so far this week include Maryland’s governor, Wes Moore; Illinois’s governor, JB Pritzker; Pennsylvania’s governor, Josh Shapiro; the California representative Ro Khanna; the Arizona senator Ruben Gallego; the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries; the Massachusetts representative Ayanna Pressley; and others.

Following Harris on Friday morning, former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg suggested that he would be running in the 2028 election, too.

During their conversation, Sharpton asked Buttigieg: “When you ran for president, you met me and we went up … to lunch at Sylvia’s restaurant in Harlem. Just so my calendar is clear, should I be reserving a table at Sylvia’s?”

In response, Buttigieg said: “You save your seat. I’ll be there.”

Like Harris, Buttigieg also lambasted the Trump administration and warned of the threat against voting rights across the country, saying: “This administration has adopted a seek-and-destroy approach to anything that even looks like it might have something to do with helping disadvantaged communities.”

He also urged stronger leadership across the Democratic party, saying: “Nothing is stopping us but ourselves in our leadership. That’s why we need better leadership. Of course the other guys are bad but that’s not all there is to it.”

Maryland representative Glenn Ivey, the South Carolina representative Jim Clyburn and the New York district attorney, Alvin Bragg, are scheduled to speak. On Saturday, attenders are expected to hear from the Arizona senator Mark Kelly, the Florida representative Maxwell Frost and Kentucky’s governor, Andy Beshear. (It has been reported that California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and the New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were unable to attend.)