ID? I Don't, Do You?

Let’s talk about identification for a minute.
As many of you know, during my hiatus, Governor Bev Perdue vetoed the GOP led House Bill 351 to require voters to produce a photo ID at the polling place.
“North Carolinians who are eligible to vote have a constitutionally guaranteed right to cast their ballots, and no one should put up obstacles to citizens exercising that right,” she said.
While I am in total agreement with that statement, as I think most reasonable people are, I don’t agree with the Democrats’ definition of obstacles or the Republicans’ rationale for wanting the law in the first place.
You see for most Dems, the obstacles they are referring to are rooted in barring Black Americans from voting by way of violence and intimidation. This was a very real problem at one time in America but today, not so much. The only issues at the polls these days come from fanatical followers of candidates who try to harass people wearing the opposition’s campaign buttons. Nobody is standing outside with ropes and axe handles.
I have voted in two states in my life; West Virginia (my birth state) and North Carolina (my chosen home). I have also voted absentee when I was in the military. Not once in all the elections I have participated in have I ever seen anyone turned away because of what they were.
Did someone around me falsify their identity to vote? Maybe, but I doubt it. I have seen people turned away because they were not on the roll where they tried to vote and in fact, I was turned away once because I went to the wrong polling place. That was my fault and I found the right place and was still able to vote.
However, that is the GOP’s main concern; that someone will vote under someone else’s identity.
Look, when you can get the registered voters to come out and vote like they should, then worry about non-registered voters faking their identity. Until then, false voting is the least of our worries as a democratic republic.
In NC in 2010 with only 66 percent of the population even registered to vote, less than 50 percent turned out to cast ballots. Nationally, only 41 percent of registered voters cast a ballot and in 2008, our last general election, only 65 percent took the time.
Apathy is the problem, not voter fraud.
What makes you pro ID folks think that if you can’t get registered voters out that you have to worry about the people who don’t even take the time to register?
As for me, my opposition to the bill is that once again a governmental body is trying to find yet another way to get my name on an official list. And we all know if you’re not on the list you don’t get in. We also know that if the government has you on yet another list, you’ll be easier to find, when they start looking for people like you.
This type of bill is nothing more than another cow patty on the slippery slope to loss of personal freedoms.
If I am a registered voter, with a voter registration card in my pocket and I show up at my polling place, the only thing the government needs to do is check my name off the list and point me toward the polling booth.

I find it confusing that otherwise reasonable Republicans and TEA Party folks I know think that somehow more governmental control is a good thing. I find it frustrating because these folks are the same folks out there screaming that we need smaller government with fewer intrusions into the lives of citizens.
If we allow our governments, national, state and local, to start requiring official identification for voting, how long will it be until we have to provide ID to travel from one state or town to another, to buy a car, to buy food? How long until cops can stop you in the street and check you ID to see if you are local or not?
Think that sounds crazy? Think of it this way; law enforcement is permitted to set up license checks on government owned roads. Why? Because the roads are owned and maintained by the government and so they have the “legal” right to ensure that the people driving on it have the proper papers and insurance coverage.
Now look into the future a little; a man is walking down the street in an upper-class neighborhood. He’s just walking on a sunny weekend day with no destination in mind just walking around enjoying the view; let’s say he’s in Charlotte or Charleston, SC. Now he might be dressed casually, but not expensively, he is stopped by a police officer who asks him for his ID and health insurance information. The man doesn’t have any and is detained.
Don’t think it can happen?
Town and city streets and sidewalks are on government owned land, the public is permitted to use them, but they are owned and maintained by the government. Just as the government is allowed to stop you on the highway they own and ask to see your papers, the same principle can be used to stop you on city sidewalks. If national health coverage becomes law someday, they could cite you if you don’t have it when they ask for your ID.
Some people say this can’t happen, I say tell that the people of 1940’s Germany or 1950’s Russia.
The government is going to use any means at their disposal to control the citizenry, because a docile, controlled and well documented population is easy to manipulate. If we allow them to continue to put us on list after list after list, and force us to carry special IDs for various reasons we are allowing them to make cattle of us.
Like voter ID? How do you feel about a national ID card? That’s the logical conclusion to all these bills to track who you are and where you go. Then there will be no place to live free and unmolested.
I don’t think I want to go along and if you have half a brain and some healthy skepticism about the motives of government and their desire for total control, you won’t go along with it either.