CNN:
President Barack Obama broke out the term “fake news” in reference to concerns about voter fraud on Wednesday, making the case that voting should be easier, not more difficult.
Obama was asked in his final news conference as President about race relations in the US, saying that “inequality” was what concerns him most….
He mentioned in particular access to voting as a key concern of his — nothing that the oft-cited explanation for restrictive voting laws of widespread fraud is inaccurate.“This is something that has constantly been disproved,” Obama said. “This is fake news.”
Obama also said the premise that millions of Americans were trying to vote but ineligible was the opposite of reality.“We have a whole country of people who are eligible to vote who don’t vote,” Obama said. “And so the whole idea that we put in place a bunch of barriers to people voting doesn’t make sense.”He added that limits to voting rights “traces directly back to Jim Crow and the legacy of slavery.”