Activist and actor Jesse Williams slammed the myth of voter fraud, deeming the idea propagated by President Donald Trump “a lie.”
Having been outspoken about civil rights throughout the 2016 campaign season, Williams told “The Daily Show” (around the 5:30 mark) about his voter protection work with the Advancement Project, which is described as a “multiracial civil rights organization” on its website. Williams, who sits on the board of the organization led by civil right attorneys across the nation, said the group won cases defending voting rights in North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
“Voter fraud is a myth. It’s fake. It’s a lie. It’s bulls—. It’s not real,” Williams said. “And it’s been created to stop … to preserve the status quo and to stop Black, brown and poor people from having access. All of these things are a part of a thread, when you talk about police accountability, anything, part of a thread of people having to spend their entire life fighting for the rights they already supposedly have ― exhausting themselves just to have the thing that you said that we had when we were born.”
Williams added there is a lot of work that needs to be done to preserve people’s access to polling places, which Atlanta Black Star reported were monitored less in counties that were once ruled by Jim Crow laws.