Booker supports enfranchising people with felony records.
Booker believes that people in prison for "serious felonies" surrender the right to vote while in prison, but those serving time for nonviolent drug offenses should be allowed to vote while they're in prison, primarily because he does not believe these offenders should be in prison in the first place.
“Where I begin all of this isn’t the fight to get people in prison their voting rights. It’s to get them out of prison. That’s my fight. We should have 50 percent reductions in incarceration, and that would still not be in line with the rest of the industrialized nations that do not incarcerate as many people…. Let’s start with the larger fight. Why are they going to prison in the first place for nonviolent drug offenses? Literally, now, two of the last three presidents have admitted to felony drug use, but they get to be president and low-income people, drug-addicted people, people with mental illness, they have to go to prison and not just lose their voting rights, but lose their absolute liberty.”
Cory Booker Wants To Allow Some Prisoners To Vote
Huffington Post, May 30, 2019 | Kevin Robillard
“You know, these felony disenfranchise laws – if you go back to some of the state legislative debates that were happening after Reconstruction, they were designed to stop African-Americans from voting. These have racist roots to these laws. And it gets to a point now where you can see the fruit of that poison tree – is that you have some counties in America where 1 out of 4 African-Americans can’t vote. And remember; the overwhelming number of charges are for nonviolent drug offenses. So here, you’ve served your time, and now you’re going to have 10, 20, 40, 50, 60 years more as an adult. And you’re told that your citizen rights have been stripped from you? This is a way, I think, that poor people especially – low-income people are being stripped of their democratic power.”
Sen. Booker To Propose Next Steps In Criminal Justice Overhaul
NPR, March 7, 2019 | Steve Inskeep
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Cory Booker Wants To Allow Some Prisoners To Vote
Huffington Post, May 30, 2019 | Kevin Robillard
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