Frankly, I didn’t even think it was possible. North Dakota is the only state I know of where you don’t have to register to vote. Can you believe that? You just walk in on the day of an election and cast your vote. This should really be a model for all states.
I would have thought that this would have meant that Republicans were out of luck when to came to their usual attempts at blocking certain groups of people from voting.
Silly me! Never underestimate the Republican Party’s resolve.
What the Republican run legislature in ND did, was change the ID laws for voting. Along with the fabulous ease of no registration, the whole process was easy. If you didn’t have ID, you could just sign an affidavit and then vote.
The Republicans started to narrow the law and added restrictions in 2013 and again in 2015. Where you used to be able to use a Tribal ID card to vote, new restrictions were put in place to make that more difficult.
The list of documents does include tribal ID, along with driver’s licenses, non-driver IDs and long-term-care certificates. However, the item must show a residential address, and some tribal cards do not. In certain cases, tribes can’t include the information because tribal members’ residences don’t have the kind of street numbers used in off-reservation communities. The election safety net of past years is also gone; voters no longer have such options as signing an affidavit attesting to their identity.
Read more at indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/...
By requiring a physical address to be on an ID in order to vote, the Republicans were specifically targeting Native Americans, because many have post office box address’s only.
Many people in the US just can’t wrap their brains around this fact. They think everyone has access to the internet, cable TV, and daily mail delivery. They need to get a clue about life in rural areas.
I live in a not very rural area at all, and years ago when I moved here there was no mail delivery, even though we did have specific physical addresses. It didn’t bother me much because I already had a PO Box. At that time my drivers license had my PO Box as well.
Some time after 9/11 that changed; PO Boxes could no longer be used on drivers licenses, and mine was replaced with a physical address. That has never interfered with my voting but does cause problems when people want to mail something to the address and there is no mail delivery.
But here's the thing, I have a street address. Houses on many Reservations do not. Chase Iron Eyes, running for the at-large Congressional seat in North Dakota told me that they didn’t even have street names until after he was out of college. (Which might mean as late as 2007.) He lives on Standing Rock Reservation.
Marvin Nelson, a state Representative running for Governor said Reservations don’t have the same kind of 911 services because of this, and he offered as well that, Tribal ID’s are actually more secure than state drivers licenses.
A lawsuit was filed by seven members of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. (This is part of the district that Marvin Nelson represents.)
The Native plaintiffs say the restrictions, passed by the North Dakota legislature in 2013 and tightened further in 2015, disproportionately burden and even disenfranchise Native American voters who, among other issues, live farther from offices where they can obtain alternative identification and are less likely to have the vehicle needed to get there. For example, Standing Rock residents drive as many as 120 miles round trip to the nearest office issuing driver’s licenses. Natives are also poorer and more likely to find the fees and transportation costs prohibitive. By falling more heavily on Native people, says the lawsuit, these burdens violate the Voting Rights Act and the United States and North Dakota constitutions.
Read more at indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/...
And they won!
On August 1, 2016, a federal district court enjoined North Dakota’s strict voter ID law and ruled that voters unable to obtain the necessary identification may vote in the upcoming election by completing a declaration or affidavit. The court agreed with the seven Native American voters that the new law disproportionately burdens Native Americans and denies qualified voters the right to vote. www.narf.org/...
Federal Judge Daniel Hovland wrote, “[t]he record is replete with concrete evidence of significant burdens imposed on Native American voters attempting to exercise their right to vote in North Dakota.” Although the state argued that the law was necessary to prevent voter fraud, the court found that there “is a total lack of any evidence to show voter fraud has ever been a problem in North Dakota.” The court concluded that it “is a minimal burden for the State to conduct this year’s election in the same manner it successfully administered elections for decades before the enactment of the new voter ID laws.” www.narf.org/...
For this election at least, they won. We have to ensure that voters retain the right to vote with ease and I think the best way we do that, is to elect candidates who do want to protect everyone’s voting rights. That’s why I urge you to support Chase Iron Eyes, and Marvin Nelson. Both are supporters of 90for90, a voter advocacy movement.
Four Directions
In Lakota culture, the Four Directions represent the way of life we Lakota maintain and the circle of life we individuals participate in to better ourselves and our communities. Times have changed since we went to war to fight for our way of life, our treaties, and our Tribal sovereignty. We now protect our communities and our rights by going to the polls to vote.