Sen. Cory Booker criticized fellow Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders’ idea of giving incarcerated felons, including convicted terrorists, voting rights.
“Let’s get this conversation back to where it is right now. Our prison population in this country has gone up 500% since 1980 alone. We locked up more people for marijuana in 2017 than all the violent crimes combined,” Booker said in a PBS interview. “And so here we have a nation that takes away people’s liberty and their right to vote for doing things that two of the last three presidents admitted to doing.”
“So if Bernie Sanders wants to get involved in a conversation about whether Dylann Roof and the marathon bomber should have the right to vote, my focus is liberating black and brown people and low-income people from prison, because we have a system in America, as Bryan Stevenson says, that treats you better if you’re rich and guilty than if you’re poor and innocent,” Booker said.
The junior senator from New Jersey said he wants to focus on “tearing down the system of mass incarceration” so the incarcerated felon voting rights debate does not need to happen.
Sanders, of Vermont, is not backing down from his idea, saying taking away people’s right to vote because they are in jail could lead to a “slippery slope” of other people’s voting rights being taken away.
[Related: Bernie Sanders says Boston bomber should be able to vote from prison]
At a rally in Texas, @SenSanders says convicted felons should “pay the price” for their crimes
“But,” Sanders said. “That does not mean that your right to participate in our democracy should be taken away from you.”
He called it a “slippery slope.” pic.twitter.com/W0lJA0D4je
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) April 25, 2019
“Once you begin taking away somebody’s right to vote, you’re moving down a slippery slope. ‘You committed a crime, you can’t vote. You’re poor, you can’t vote,'” Sanders told his supporters last week at a rally in Fort Worth, Texas.
