0 disproportionately registered democrats. if you live in a state in north carolina and your photo i.d. is your student i.d. from college, you will not be able to vote. you will not be able to go to the polls to cast a ballot anymore. not after the law that was signed in north carolina today. civics teachers and student groups that have been preregistering 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds so they can vote as soon as they turn 18, that is also not going to happen anymore. no more voter registration efforts for young people in north carolina. they dramatically cut early voting. they cut all the early voting on sundays. you've heard of souls to the polls efforts. early voting sundays before elections largely from black churches, not anymore. no more early voting on sundays. what exactly does that have to do with voter fraud? precisely nothing, but it sure will make it harder to vote in north carolina, particularly for groups that tend to vote democratic. something like 70% of african-american voters who voted in the 2012 election in north carolina, 70%, voted early. so clearly, early voting's got to go. republican governor pat mccrory of north carolina signed the voting law changes today. he put out a youtube video explaining that it is just the extreme left complaining about this bill. he says making up scare tactics about this bill and really he's just all about protecting the vote in north carolina. by making it a lot harder to vote in north carolina. two lawsuits have already been filed today to stop the new law. a third may be on its way according to reporting. the lawsuits are being filed under a little thing we used to call the voting rights act which is not what it used to be, since the supreme court gutted it early this summer. congress made some noise after the supreme court ruling that maybe they might think about shoring the law back up, but really as you know, congress is not doing much of anything these days. it is times like this when you learn what it really means to be sometimes when you lose that authority, you instead decide you're going to sue. what is the range of options available to you? and how do you use it? how do you still try to make progress when some avenues toward the progress you want to make are blocked? on the issue of drugs and criminal justice, the obama administration made it a priority to try to reduce the huge disparity in sentencing for crack cocaine versus powder cocaine. i mean, if cocaine is the problem, why be so much more lenient for one variety of cocaine and so much more strict for the other? on that issue, the administration found a lot of allies in congress. the build to reduce those sentencing disparities between crack cocaine and powder cocaine, that bill passed by a voice vote in the house in 2010. it passed the senate by unanimous consent. because of that, thousands of people who had already been sentenced under the bad old guidelines, they had their sentences retroactively reduced because of that law being passed by congress and signed by the president. the sentence disparity still exists, but it is not nearly as bad as it used to be. that progress was made with congress. there's this range of options. right? there's a range of latitude that you have in the executive branch. that you have as president or the attorney general. and this is some of the most interesting maneuvering we get in american political science. i mean, sometimes you make your case and hope that others will make change. like in the stand your ground speeches. sometimes you urge congress to make a change and they do. sometimes you sue to force a change through the courts. and sometimes you find a way to make the change yourself, even when nobody had ever thought it might be possible. a really dramatic change was made today by the attorney general eric holder. saying that too many americans go to too many prisons for far too long. the attorney general announced today prosecutors will change the way they bring prosecutions for drug crimes starting now. the change they're going to make frankly reducing the number of people in prison and how long they are there for. this is not eric holder changing the law. maybe congress will get around to changing the law someday. in the meantime, this changes the way the law is enforced around the country instantly as of today. it kind of seems like this might be a big deal. joining us, bryan stevenson of the equal justice initiative and professor at nyu. thank you for being with us. nice to have you here. >> my pleasure. thank you. >> so can you explain how significant a change this is and how these changes are going to be implemented? >> oh, i think it's a very significant change. you know, when we passed mandatory minimum laws, everybody thinks that eliminated discretion. it took discretion away from judges and gave it to prosecutors. today the attorney general said he's going to exercise that discretion in a way that actually reduces the number of people being sent to prison for these long prison sentences for low-level non-violent drug of fear and anger. most people recognize that these kinds of reforms are critically necessary. but our instincts after 40 years of mass incarceration make it very hard for politicians to actually pass the laws that produce the amount of time that people spend in prison. so we've been looking for leadership, and i think what he's done today is significant leadership. i think it has the possibility of being replicated in states which is where we really need it. we have to remember that only 10% of the people incarcerated in this country are in the federal system. most of our mass imprisonment problem is in the states. and this decision won't directly effect state policy but could have an impact on how we think about mass incarceration and also drug policy. drug policy has been so misguided for so long that i'm hoping it inspires a healthier conversation about how to move forward. >> it's interesting, in the attorney general's speech explaining this move today, he talked about reforms toward lessening the prison population, toward affording prosecutorial and charging discretion in a way that might lead to shorter sentences or fewer sentences. in a lot of unexpected places. in a lot of red states. he talked about texas, for example, and other southern republican-controlled states that have made reforms to their criminal justice system. is that -- obviously that's politically important for trying to get a change like this to stick. is that a sign this is actually becoming less of a partisan combat, this is becoming something that's treated sort of more technocratically? >> i think it is. there are a lot of people on both sides of the political aisle that have been urging us to be smarter on crime. we can't keep invoking tough on crime. we have to be smart on crime. a lot of republicans and democrats have been making that call and you have seen states, texas and south carolina and states that are considered conservative implementing policies designed to turn around some of these things. we have to be honest a lot of this is driven by cost. you know, we're spending $80 billion to keep people incarcerated that are not a threat to public safety. we need those dollars in other parts of our government. it's not just kind of moral evolution here. there's also a cost dynamic. i think this can become an issue that is less politicized than a lot of the issues that we've been dealing with here recently at the policy and certainly the national policy level. >> bryan, when you look at our overall relationship to other industrialized countries, other well-off countries around the world and see how disproportionately we lock up our own population, do you think there need to be a root and branch fundamental change in the way we approach crime and punishment or do you think we could sort of normalize our level of imprisonment in this country compared to the rest of the world through step-by-step changes like this? i despair of the prospect of us rethinking it in a big way, but i do feel like it is possible to make significant changes step by step like this one today. >> well, i think actually in some ways both things are really needed. i think you're right. we can -- i believe we can reduce the prison population in this country by 50% over the next 6 to 8 years if we engage in the kind of policy initiatives that the attorney general announced today. and i think we have to do that. we have the highest rate of incarceration in the world. we are decimating communities. a black boy born in 2000 has a 32% chance of going to jail or prison. that's a shocking and really disturbing reality. we've got to make some changes. but i also think we have to think more fundamentally about crime and punishment. we've been so carried away with finding ways to put as many people in prison for as long as possible that we've got to deal not only with mandatory minimum sentences but deal with three strikes laws. we have to deal with more rational sentencing, more effective sentencing. the federal government actually created the war on drugs. they are the ones that spent billions of dollars and gave it to the state to create drug task forces that have really corrupted our criminal justice priorities. some states, we're spending all of our money to get marijuana possessors in jail in prison and under-prosecuting violent crimes involving rape and murder. we've got to change that around. that's why i think both of these things are needed. we've got to do reforms, incremental reforms and also create a more just, more humane or rational system of justice that prioritizes public safety but also prioritizes human recovery and rehabilitation and healthy communities. >> bryan stevenson, founder and executive director of equal justice initiative. thank you for being here tonight. >> very happy to be with you. i will tell you in the 1990s before i was involved in media, i worked in criminal justice issues. the scale of american imprisonment was one of those things that seemed absolutely impenetrable as a political issue. something that would never get better, that would only get worse over the course of my lifetime to the point where it became the dominant thing in american politics and in american society. it just seemed like it was a mountain that could never be climbed. and it is not a mountain. turns out it's a mesa and we're coming down the other side of it and this thing is changing. nothing is inevitable in american politics. we'll be right back. about who to hire without going to angie's list first. with angie's list, i know who to call, and i know the results will be fantastic! find out why more than two million members count on angie's list. angie's list -- reviews you can trust. but you had to leave rightce to now, would you go? 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