Obama points to Jim Crow roots of restrictions to voting rights

Speaking Wednesday at his final White House press conference, President Obama offered a reminder of the racist history behind some U.S. voting restrictions.

“The reason that we are the only country among advanced democracies that makes it harder to vote … traces directly back to Jim Crow and the legacy of slavery,” Obama said, arguing that “there is an ugly history to [voting rights] that we should not be shy about talking about.”

President Barack Obama speaks during his final presidential news conference, Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2017, in the briefing room of the White House in Washington. (Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)
President Obama speaks during his final presidential news conference. (Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)

The president expressed concern about continued efforts to restrict voting rights and said, “I hope that people pay attention to making sure everybody has a chance to vote… make it easier, not harder.”

In recent years, a number of Republican-controlled state governments have instituted restrictions like those requiring voters to carry identification. But Obama dismissed the idea of widespread in-person voter fraud as “fake news.”

“The notion that there are a whole bunch of people out there who are going out there and want to vote and are not eligible to vote — we have the opposite problem. We have people who are eligible to vote who don’t vote,” he said. “And so the idea that we put in place a whole bunch of barriers to people voting doesn’t makes sense.”

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