Obama’s Final Whopper as President

President Obama is known for telling some whoppers — “If you like your health-care plan, you can keep it” is perhaps the most infamous — so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that he told a final one as president right before leaving office last week.

At his final press conference, Obama promised that he would continue to fight voter-ID laws and other measures designed to improve voting integrity. The U.S. is “the only country among advanced democracies that makes it harder to vote,” he claimed. “It traces directly back to Jim Crow and the legacy of slavery, and it became sort of acceptable to restrict the franchise. . . . This whole notion of election-voting fraud, this is something that has constantly been disproved. This is fake news.”

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But Obama’s first statement, that the U.S. is unique in trying to enforce ballot integrity, is demonstrably false.

All industrialized democracies — and most that are not — require voters to prove their identity before voting. Britain was a holdout, but last month it announced that persistent examples of voter fraud will require officials to see passports or other documentation from voters in areas prone to corruption.

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And if Obama knew much about geography, he might notice that our neighbors require voter ID. Canada adopted voter-ID requirements in 2007 and saw them reaffirmed in 2010; they have worked smoothly since, with almost no complaints. Mexico’s “Credencial para Votar” has a hologram, a photo, and other information embedded in it, and it is impossible to effectively tamper with it. {snip}

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Polls have shown that voter-ID laws and similar measures enjoy great popular support all over the world. In the U.S., a comprehensive Washington Post poll in 2012 found that 74 percent of respondents believed that voters should present a photo ID. Polls since then have confirmed that level of support.

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