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Barack Obama leads ILL chant, speaks at University of Illinois

Former President Barack Obama spoke at Foellinger Hall on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on Friday. Obama received the Paul H. Douglas Award for Ethics in Government from the UI System’s Institute of Government and Public Affairs.

There were about 1,000 tickets available to students, which were distributed based on a random lottery between the three UI campuses.

The speech was also live-streamed on the UI website, which Obama shared via Twitter earlier in the morning.

Today I’m at the University of Illinois to deliver a simple message to young people all over the country: You need to vote, because our democracy depends on it.