What Obama Just Said About White People Will Make You FURIOUS [VIDEO] While speaking to a group of University of Chicago law school students recently, Barack Obama argued that Americas voting system is rooted in discrimination, with laws that are designed to unabashedly discourage Americans from voting. According to reports from Western Journalism, Obama reportedly told the scholars that mandatory voting would reduce some of the polarization that he believes exists in our system today. True to character, he was quick to bring race into the discussion. We really are the only advanced democracy on earth that systematically and purposefully makes it really hard for people to vote, Obama commented. There is no other country on Earth that does that. There is a legacy to that, that grows directly out of a history in which first propertied men, then white men, then white folks didnt want women, minorities, to participate in the political process and be able to empower themselves in that fashion. Thats the history. We should be a society in whichat this pointwe say, yeah, that history is not so good. That cant be right, he continued. There is no justification for that. You cant defend it. Maybe the single biggest change that we could make in our political process that would reduce some of the polarization, make people feel more invested and restore integrity to the system is just make sure everybody is voting. Australia has got mandatory voting. If you start getting 70 or 80 percent voting rates, thats transformative. Thats the essence of our democracy, he concluded. We cant help but wonder if Obama is referring to the large number of young liberals who neglect to vote. 