Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is back on Twitter with a thread about why incarcerated people shouldn’t be denied the right to vote. Jumping off a TV town hall comment by 2020 presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), AOC broke down why being imprisoned shouldn’t mean losing your voice in democracy.

At a CNN town hall on Monday, April 22, Sanders was asked by Harvard University student Anne Carlstein whether his support for giving voting rights to convicted felons extended to people like the Boston marathon bomber or those guilty of sexual assault.

“Here is my view: If somebody commits a serious crime — sexual assault, murder — they’re going to be punished,” Sanders said, after making points about youth voter turnout and alleging “cowardly Republican governors” are engaged in voter suppression. “But I think the right to vote is inherent to our democracy — yes, even for terrible people. Because once you start chipping away [at that right] … you’re running down a slippery slope.”

“I do believe that even if [people] are in jail, they’re paying their price to society, but that should not take away their inherent American right to participate in our democracy,” Sanders said. “This is a democracy. We’ve got to expand that democracy. And I believe every single person does have the right to vote.”

At the time, CNN’s Chris Cuomo asked Sanders if he thought he would be attacked for his remarks, specifically how the question was framed around the Boston Marathon bomber. Sanders said he’s often been attacked for his views, saying, “This’ll be just another one.”

Sanders was right, as opposition to his stance has surfaced. Enter AOC, who took to Twitter to shift the conversation from the Boston Marathon bomber to the larger issue of votes for incarcerated people.

“Instead of asking, ‘Should the Boston Bomber have the right to vote?’ Try, ‘Should a nonviolent person stopped w/ a dime bag LOSE the right to vote?’” Ocasio-Cortez wrote. “[Because] that question reflects WAY more people.”

Tying the denial of voting rights to slavery, Jim Crow laws, the War on Drugs, and mass incarceration, the congresswoman from the Bronx made the case that denying voting rights to convicted felons intersects with how people of color are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system: The result is that the black and brown people the criminal justice system seemingly targets are losing their voting rights behind bars.

ProCon.org, a nonprofit that researches controversial issues, found that in 2016, an estimated 6.1 million people with felony convictions in the U.S. could not vote — approximately 2.5% of the voting population (excluding Washington, D.C.). Because of African-Americans’s disproportionate representation in prison populations in the U.S., in 2016 7.44% of them could not vote due to felony convictions. In some states, the percentages are higher; 26.15% of Kentucky’s black population couldn’t vote in 2016 for this reason. The same year, 10.43% of all Florida voting-age residents couldn’t vote because of a felony record.

In Florida, a law restoring voting rights to 1.4 million people with felony convictions went into effect earlier this year.

Want more from Teen Vogue? Check this out:The Right to Vote Shouldn’t Be Taken From People With Felonies