NEW ORLEANS - Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Tim Kaine says voting is a "sacred act."

Kaine is in New Orleans addressing the Progressive National Baptist Convention, a group of African-American Baptist churches born out of the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Kaine spoke extensively about his religious upbringing including the year he spent in Honduras. He says when he came back from Honduras - at that time a dictatorship - he had a new attitude about the importance of voting.

Kaine says he meets people every day who worry their vote doesn't matter. But stressed how important it is.

His comments come as many in the African-American community are worried over the effects of a 2013 decision by the Supreme Court that invalidated a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.