Obama scolds SXSW audience when they laugh at him for claiming requiring IDs to vote is voter suppression

President Obama scolded the audience at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, for taking amusement in his pronouncement that the U.S. makes it too difficult for citizens to vote.

“We’re the only advanced democracy in the world that makes it harder for people to vote,” Obama said.

There was some scattered laughing in the crowd, irking Obama, although the left-leaning crowd may have been chuckling sardonically in agreement with Obama’s dramatic claim. He then went on to claim that the U.S. makes it “as hard as possible for our citizens to vote.”

“You’re laughing, but it’s sad,” he said. “We take enormous pride in the fact that we are the world’s oldest, continuous democracy, and yet systematically put up barriers and make it as hard as possible for our citizens to vote, and it is much easier to order pizza or a trip than it is for you to exercise the single most important task in a democracy, and that is for you to select who’s going to represent you in government.”

Protesting against alleged measures to “suppress” the vote is a popular Democratic Party cause. Democrats tend to sternly oppose Voter ID laws mandating photo identification for people wanting to vote, in spite of such identification needed to perform such basic tasks already like order alcohol or board a commercial airplane.