ABC News "This Week" - Transcript: On the Voting Rights Act

Interview

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Thank you for joining us this morning. You and I have argued this, that the combination of the Supreme Court's decision back in 2013, which overthrew the key portion of the Voting Rights Act, efforts to pass new voter ID laws in dozens of states put the Voting Rights Act under a real threat.

So I guess my question is what is the solution? Some like Martin O'Malley say you need a constitutional amendment to guarantee the right to vote.

SEN. CORY BOOKER, D-N.J.: Well, first, I just want to press the case because many people don't understand that this Voting Rights Act -- the Voting Rights Act is under threat. And these voter ID laws which are being passed in many states have a disproportionate impact on poor folks --

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STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me -- what's the harm in making sure that there's no fraud at the voting booth?

BOOKER: I think that that's the point, which is there is no fraud at the voting booth. In fact, take Texas for example, where Lyndon Johnson's obviously from, they passed these voter ID laws. In the decade before it, 10 years, they only prosecute two people for in person voter ID, only two people. You're more likely to get struck by lightning in Texas than to find any kind of voter fraud.

But yet they passed a law that even right now we saw that the circuit court said that there's 600,000 people being affected by this, disproportionately minority, disproportionately poor.

So when you see all these voter restrictions taking advantage of the loopholes that were opened up in the Voting Rights Act by the Shelby decision, the lack of pre-clearance necessary, you suddenly see people racing to put in laws that really are as we see, a solution that's had no problem.

And in fact, it's creating the problem of --

STEPHANOPOULOS: -- do you need a constitutional amendment?

BOOKER: You know, there's -- I've joined with Dick Durbin, with Senator Leahy, Senator Coons in a step before that. I don't think necessarily you need a constitutional amendment. I think there's things we can do administratively through -- legislatively to address that.

But we need to understand that there has to be some kind of halt done to a lot of these movements to deny people voting rights. And I want to take it even a step further because, for me, right now, I look at the Voting Rights Act, borne not through the pen of Lyndon Johnson only, but before the ink was dried, it was a sweat, blood and effort of many people to expand voting access to Americans.

But what we've also seen in this country since the 1970s is a rate restriction of voting rights in our country. What I mean specifically by that is in 1976, about 1.7 million Americans were denied their voting rights because of previous convictions. They had felony disenfranchisement. Well, since the 1970s, we had this explosion of this drug war, incredible explosion of mass incarceration in this country, disproportionately affecting poor people and minorities. And now we've come to a point in America in 2010, we had 5.85 million Americans who have lost their voting rights because of previous convictions. They paid their debt to society, many of them non-violent criminals.

If that was a state, it would be the 20th biggest state in our nation.

STEPHANOPOULOS: That -- that is -- that is just one issue, the criminal justice issue, that's also getting a lot of attention right now.

We've seen the -- the rise of this Black Lives Matter movement over the last -- Matter movement over the last year, as well. It's gaining some steam.

And there was a moment last night, Bernie Sanders was out in Seattle, where he was trying to speak. And I want to show you where he was actually talked down by members of the Black Lives Matter protests.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That is the only way that this...

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: -- don't back up.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We will fight for black lives no matter what it takes.

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STEPHANOPOULOS: Is he getting fair treatment there?

And -- and what more should be done to address this issue?

BOOKER: Well, two things. First of all, Bernie Sanders is a friend and a colleague. I'm supporting Hillary Clinton in the -- in this election, but Bernie has become somebody I've had tremendous -- I have tremendous respect for and is an ally of mine in addressing issues in the United States Senate that affect minority communities. He has a long record of civil rights.

But the anger you saw there, the -- from the protesters, this is a legitimate degree of frustration in this country, in a nation that has yet to confront what I believe are persistent civil rights issues, human rights issues.

And you mentioned in the criminal justice system, yes, so now we know that we see -- there are some states where one in five black Americans don't have a right to vote because of this mass felony franchise.

But that's just one thing. We have an overall cri -- prison system where we see that there's no difference in America between blacks and whites, between minorities and whites in using drugs. In fact, there's no difference in dealing drugs. Some studies show that young whites have more of a -- a chance of -- of being drug dealers, but yet we have an incarceration rate for drugs -- for drug use and for drug selling -- that is disproportionately seen in -- in communities of color.

And the result of that has created these awful realities in America, where right now, we have more African-Americans under criminal supervision than all of the slaves in 1850, where we have a nation that has states like mine, that has 14, 15 percent African-Americans, but the prison population is over 60 percent black.

And so when you know that it is no difference, but if you're an African-American, you're almost four times more likely to be caught for using marijuana than if you were white, when you see a criminal justice system that is not what the Supreme Court has etched in its wall, equal justice under the law, please understand that there is going to be an understandable reaction to that in our country.

And the criminal justice system is so overbroad right now, that we, as a nation, are spending a quarter of a trillion dollars a year. We have -- we're 4 percent of the -- of the globe's population, 4 to 5 percent, but we have one out of every four imprisoned people here in this country.

And so, yes, there's a reason to be upset.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator -- Senator Corey...

BOOKER: And there's a reason to act out.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator Corey Booker, thanks very much for your time this morning.

BOOKER: Thank you so much.

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