Hanks: Producing an ID to vote should be required

Take a moment and think about this: As an American citizen, what is more important to you — the ability to freely travel, to carry a firearm on your person or to select the men and women who represent you in elected office?

To me, it’s a no-brainer — voting is as basic a right as any granted to us in our constitution. In fact, the leaders we elect can take away any of the other rights we have, making our right to vote the most important of them all.

So why is it less important to show identification to cast your vote than it is to travel or to carry a pistol?

Test this theory: put this newspaper down and go for a drive in your car. If you get pulled over and you can’t produce your driver’s license, you’re going to get in trouble with the law.

Or go to the airport and attempt to board an airplane without any sort of identification. I promise you won’t get within sight of an airplane before you are dealing with federal authorities.

The same goes for carrying a sidearm; if you can’t produce your concealed carry permit, law enforcement is going to deal with you.

But if you go into your local voting precinct, you don’t have to show any identification to cast your ballot. What’s stopping you from looking at the voter log, taking another person’s name and casting their vote? Nothing — although there is current movement afoot in Raleigh to rectify this situation.

And it’s time. If you know there’s a problem that can be solved (even if some claim there isn’t a problem) and you do nothing to resolve it, you’re committing a worse mistake.

Our good friends in the NAACP and other like-minded organizations are attempting to paint voter ID advocates as racists and extremists — even firing up their constituencies by comparing voter ID efforts to the terrible days of Jim Crow laws.

Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, I offer this argument: not having voter ID laws is more racist than having them. How do you think the older lady who lived through those terrible Jim Crow days would feel when she gets to the voting booth and someone has already used her name to vote?

That is highly unlikely to happen if voter ID laws are enacted in North Carolina. It’s common sense to have to produce and ID to vote … which probably explains why it hasn’t yet been enacted, since politicians on both sides of the aisle have less common sense than a six-month-old puppy.

Bryan C. Hanks is the managing editor of The Free Press; his column appears in this space every Sunday. You can reach him at 252-559-1074 or Bryan.Hanks@Kinston.com. Follow him on Twitter at BCHanks.