Obama: Reports of voter fraud are ‘fake news’

by Rebecca Savransky - 01/18/17 3:18 PM ET

Obama on voting fraud: "This is something that has constantly been disproved. This is fake news." https://t.co/m8GqeunlXk

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) January 18, 2017

President Obama on Wednesday talked about the importance of voting rights, dismissing the idea of large-scale voter fraud as “fake news.”

“This whole notion of voting fraud — this is something that has constantly been disproved,” Obama said during the final press conference of his presidency.

{mosads}”This is fake news — the notion that there are a whole bunch of people out there who are going out there and are not eligible to vote and want to vote.”

Instead, Obama said, the country has the opposite problem: There are a lot of people in the country who are eligible to vote but don’t cast their ballots.

Obama said the U.S. is the only country in the advanced world that makes it harder to vote rather than easier.

“And that dates back, there’s an ugly history to that that we should not be shy about talking about,” he said.

“The reason that we are the only country among advanced democracies that makes it harder to vote is — it traces directly back to Jim Crow and the legacy of slavery — and it became sort of acceptable to restrict the franchise.”

Obama said that’s not “who we are.”

“That shouldn’t be who we are,” he said. “That’s not when America works best.”

He said the country should make it easier to vote, not harder.

“The idea that we put in place a whole bunch of barriers to people voting,” he said, “doesn’t make sense.”

Obama also spoke out against political gerrymandering, saying the concept is “bad for our democracy, too.”

“I worry about that,” he said.

Updated: 3:30 p.m.

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