Thanks to a decision by an Obama-appointed federal judge last week, It will be easier for American Indians to vote in Nevada this year. And, reports Megan R. Wilson, this could mean Democrats, who typically get the lion’s share of the Native vote in Nevada, will hang onto their Senate seat in that state being vacated by Minority Leader Harry Reid.
Although all American Indians supposedly got the right to vote in 1924 with passage of the Snyder Act, several states continued to deny this right for decades, sparking lawsuits in New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado as late as 1970. But while the more brazen prohibitions—like allowing Indians to vote in federal but not state elections—are no longer with us, more subtle efforts to suppress the Native vote continue right up to the present day.
These can take many forms. In Texas, where would-be voters must show a photo ID, concealed gun permits are counted as good enough, but tribal IDs are unacceptable. In Fremont County, Wyoming, at-large elections near the Wind River reservation had, until a court ordered otherwise, kept Indians from ever being elected to the county governing board.
Another favored way of suppressing the Indian vote has been to have few or no polling stations available on or near reservations, or having them open for fewer hours. That won’t be the case in Nevada this year because of the court decision sparked by the efforts of the South Dakota-based grassroots voter rights advocacy group Four Directions.
In her Friday decision, Judge Miranda Du ruled that Mineral and Washoe counties must establish early-voting sites and Election Day polling stations on the reservations of two Paiute tribes. To register or to vote, members of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Indian Reservation previously had to make a 96-mile roundtrip to and from Reno, and members of the Walker River Tribe had to make a 70-mile roundtrip from and to Hawthorne, something not required of non-Natives.
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Du showed in her ruling that she has a good grasp of the reality of the situation. She wrote:
“The secretary of state implies that disparities in welfare between Native Americans and other Nevadans are particularly a result of the choice to live on remote tribal reservations. This argument, which assumes that the geography of the tribal reservations is ahistorical and apolitical, ignores a long and well-documented history.”
A year ago, the vice chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, Democratic Sen. Jon Tester, introduced S. 1912—the Native American Voting Rights Act—a bill that would fix several continuing problems for American Indian voters. Of course, like other sensible proposals, this one is hamstrung in committee by Republican obstructionists and can be expected to stay there since Republicans are well aware that Indians typically vote heavily Democratic—although their overall turnout nationwide is exceedingly low even in presidential election years, partly as a result of historical and present-day suppression.
The Tester bill would require the U.S. Attorney General to enforce tribal voting protections, provide poll observers, require all states to recognize tribal IDs as a valid form of identification when IDs are required of all voters, mandate that additional polling sites be established to give Indian citizens the same access to the polls as other Americans, require at least one early voting site to be chosen by tribal authorities, require states to supply the same level of voting equipment and the same level of training and funding for election officials working at these stations, and require states to send absentee ballots to each member of a tribe that requests such ballots.
As we edge ever closer to the 100th anniversary of when American Indians were supposed to have the same rights to vote as white citizens, it would be encouraging if Congress would take action to actually, finally, make it so.