Supreme Court Makes It Harder for Tribal North Dakotans to Vote

[RavenSky]

GOP voter cheating

The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a lower-court order requiring voters in North Dakota to present certain forms of identification and proof of their residential address in order to cast a ballot in next month’s elections.

Heitkamp won her seat by less than 3,000 votes in 2012 with strong backing from Native Americans, and she is the only statewide elected Democrat. North Dakota Republicans began changing voting rules to make it harder to cast a ballot months after Heitkamp’s victory six years ago.

North Dakota’s 2017 voter law ID was challenged by Native residents who alleged that the law disproportionately blocked Native Americans from voting. In April, a federal district court judge blocked large portions of the law as discriminatory against Native voters. “The State has acknowledged that Native American communities often lack residential street addresses,” Judge Daniel Hovland wrote. “Nevertheless, under current State law an individual who does not have a ‘current residential street address’ will never be qualified to vote.” According to the website of the Native American Rights Fund, which represents the plaintiffs, many native residents lack residential street addresses because “the U.S. postal service does not provide residential delivery in these rural Indian communities.”As a result, tribal IDs use P.O. boxes, which are not sufficient under North Dakota’s new law—a specification that seems designed to disenfranchise native voters.

https://www.motherjones.com/politic...-it-harder-for-tribal-north-dakotans-to-vote/

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Using a P.O. box doesn't mean you don't have a street address, it just means you can't get mail at it.

And this isn't just the reservations, but small places everywhere. My former employer started out in such a place, there simply was no residential mail service in town, everyone had to use a P.O. box.

These days it shouldn't be a big problem--companies can do address validation against the post office data, those box-required areas should be noted, if validating a P.O. box comes back as it being one of those mandatory ones anything that normally says no P.O. boxes should not apply.

 

[untermensche]

This Court is going to take the nation further and further into an authoritarian nightmare.

It is a Court by the rich for the rich.

With it's two Republican supporting abusers of women.

 

[Toni]

Using a P.O. box doesn't mean you don't have a street address, it just means you can't get mail at it.

And this isn't just the reservations, but small places everywhere. My former employer started out in such a place, there simply was no residential mail service in town, everyone had to use a P.O. box.

These days it shouldn't be a big problem--companies can do address validation against the post office data, those box-required areas should be noted, if validating a P.O. box comes back as it being one of those mandatory ones anything that normally says no P.O. boxes should not apply.

In my mostly rural area, it has only been a pretty recent event that farms and rural homes have what numbers assigned to them, instead of just RR Numbers. Rural people fought very, very hard to prevent the number assignment as they felt it was a violation of their rural identity. The fire department just wanted to be able to more quickly locate the correct place in the event of an emergency.

Of course this was before the days of widespread attempts at voter repression by Republicans. And frankly, they aren't trying to repress the votes of white farmers.

 

[RavenSky]

Using a P.O. box doesn't mean you don't have a street address, it just means you can't get mail at it.

"Street" addresses are issued by the U.S. post office. Not all residences have them (though the vast majority do). That is the point and problem in the OP

 

[bleubird]

Most Alaskan Natives that live in villages do not have street addresses.

 

[RavenSky]

Most Alaskan Natives that live in villages do not have street addresses.

And that is what is happening in North Dakota, too

 

[Rhea]

Using a P.O. box doesn't mean you don't have a street address, it just means you can't get mail at it.

"Street" addresses are issued by the U.S. post office. Not all residences have them (though the vast majority do). That is the point and problem in the OP

In my state they are issues by the office of real property jointly with the 911 service. A street address is a location and does not need a mailbox. I have a street address for my barn, for example.

That said,, I don’t know if that’s true in ND and the repugs are dispicable in their efforts to commit voter fraud-by-suppreession.

 

[Opoponax]

Mail in ballots would solve all these problems.

I just got mine here in California yesterday. It's already been filled out and mailed in. It doesn't get much easier than that.

However, that would give everyone an equal chance to vote. And when you can't win with ideas and results, you gotta do whatcha gotta do.

 

[Toni]

Using a P.O. box doesn't mean you don't have a street address, it just means you can't get mail at it.

"Street" addresses are issued by the U.S. post office. Not all residences have them (though the vast majority do). That is the point and problem in the OP

In my state they are issues by the office of real property jointly with the 911 service. A street address is a location and does not need a mailbox. I have a street address for my barn, for example.

That said,, I don’t know if that’s true in ND and the repugs are dispicable in their efforts to commit voter fraud-by-suppreession.

It’s quite common in the upper Midwest where there are vast sparsely opulated areas and very remote small pockets of small numbers of people. Reservations tend to be remote, isolated and to not have street addresses. Disenfranchising Native Americans further eroded their abilities to advocate for control over their lands, mineral and water rights and rights of way. And

 

[Derec]

"Street" addresses are issued by the U.S. post office. Not all residences have them (though the vast majority do). That is the point and problem in the OP

Even if you only have central PO box delivery, how would you find a house without a residential address? How would you get driving directions, or get a cab/uber to drive you there? Or more seriously, how do you get emergency services to find your place? Turn left at the big oak?
And how is this only a problem for Indians on reservations? It seems the same for all rural citizens - and if non-Indian ones can get a residential address, so can the Indians. I just hope we don't get "Leonard Peltier Pkwy." or some such.
I think it's just another excuse to fight voter id.

 

[Toni]

"Street" addresses are issued by the U.S. post office. Not all residences have them (though the vast majority do). That is the point and problem in the OP

Even if you only have central PO box delivery, how would you find a house without a residential address? How would you get driving directions, or get a cab/uber to drive you there? Or more seriously, how do you get emergency services to find your place? Turn left at the big oak?
And how is this only a problem for Indians on reservations? It seems the same for all rural citizens - and if non-Indian ones can get a residential address, so can the Indians. I just hope we don't get "Leonard Peltier Pkwy." or some such.
I think it's just another excuse to fight voter id.

It is....quite naive to think that having Uber find you out in very rural areas is actually an issue. Uber just isn’t relevant.

Emergency services are relevant, to different extents depending on the situation. Tribal police often provide those services and they know their area and population.

Think about it this way: as you go about your day to day life, how often do you day: I need to get to 1524 Market street which is where Publix or Wemans or Safeway is—or do you just go to the grocery store without thinking about the street address? And if you saw the grocery store on fire, you’d call the fire department and give cross streets or simply the neighborhood and the name of the store.

In very rural areas, that’s how it is only for individuals. In very small communities, people know when someone has moved out of his moms house and where he moved. My area isn’t nearly that small but generally people know us by our dogs.

When I go to vote, I catch up on the kids/grandkids of my election officials who, in turn, ask about my family.

People can’t just invent a physical street address for themselves. It’s assigned by the government. The same government which is saying that you have to have a street address in order to register to vote.

Yes, this can potentially affect any person in the state who lives in a very rural or remote area. It is specifically disenfranchising tribal members who live on or nervresrvations. Which is convenient as corporations and governments are frequently eager to gain access or rights to or outright ownership of lands and resources under Native American jurisdiction. How convenient if they no longer need to consider their ability to go to the polls.

 

[ZiprHead]

Amazing how all these "innocent" voter registration requirements always affect the people that the people in charge don't want to vote.

 

[Derec]

Amazing how all these "innocent" voter registration requirements always affect the people that the people in charge don't want to vote.

Usually rural people tend to be Republicans. All rural locations are affected by this surely. Thus I am calling BS on the whole story.

 

[ZiprHead]

Amazing how all these "innocent" voter registration requirements always affect the people that the people in charge don't want to vote.

Usually rural people tend to be Republicans. All rural locations are affected by this surely. Thus I am calling BS on the whole story.

My brother and sister-in-law live rural, very rural. So rural they cannot even get land-line telephone service. But they have an address.

 

[Toni]

Amazing how all these "innocent" voter registration requirements always affect the people that the people in charge don't want to vote.

Usually rural people tend to be Republicans. All rural locations are affected by this surely. Thus I am calling BS on the whole story.

Do most Native Americans vote Republican?

In rural areas, the saying that all politics are local is especially true.

 

[RavenSky]

Mail in ballots would solve all these problems.

I just got mine here in California yesterday. It's already been filled out and mailed in. It doesn't get much easier than that.

However, that would give everyone an equal chance to vote. And when you can't win with ideas and results, you gotta do whatcha gotta do.

Now that Democrats are vocally using mail-in ballots in numbers similar to or exceeding Republicans, somehow all of the sudden mail-in ballots are being rejected at rates far exceeding anything before. And somehow, the majority of those mail-in ballots being rejected are for minorities

The study also found that mail ballots cast by youngest voters, blacks and Hispanics were much more likely to be rejected than mail ballots cast by white voters,

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article218654810.html

The ACLU of Georgia sent a letter to the Cobb County Board of Elections & Registration about their illegal rejection of an electronically transmitted request for an absentee ballot.

https://www.acluga.org/en/press-rel...egally-rejecting-absentee-ballot-applications

Gwinnett County leads in rejecting mail-in ballots, with 398 turned away as of Thursday, according to numbers reported by the secretary of state’s office. Despite having only 12 percent of the state’s overall mail-in ballots, the county is responsible for 40 percent of statewide rejections so far...

The rejections show a pattern: Asian or Pacific Islander voters are rejected at four times the rate of white voters, while black voters are rejected at nearly three times the rate of white voters.

https://whowhatwhy.org/2018/10/12/e...-ballot-rejection-reeks-of-voter-suppression/

 

[Axulus]

Since no one has mentioned it yet, two of the liberal justices were part of the majority decision upholding the voter ID law.

 

[Rhea]

"Street" addresses are issued by the U.S. post office. Not all residences have them (though the vast majority do). That is the point and problem in the OP

Even if you only have central PO box delivery, how would you find a house without a residential address? How would you get driving directions, or get a cab/uber to drive you there? Or more seriously, how do you get emergency services to find your place? Turn left at the big oak?
And how is this only a problem for Indians on reservations? It seems the same for all rural citizens - and if non-Indian ones can get a residential address, so can the Indians. I just hope we don't get "Leonard Peltier Pkwy." or some such.
I think it's just another excuse to fight voter id.

I don't know what to say about how little you know about rural life.

For one thing, we only have, like, one Uber driver. And he's related to half the town. And you give directions like this:

Head down Maple and turn left where the library used to be. Go up the hill to where Granger's barn burned down, bear right, and keep going until you see the Pratt's old house. Once you get out into the field, it's the red house on the left. If you go into the woods again, you've gone too far.
or,
You know Graham's old place? We're across the creek from that.​

Moreover, the law in question says that you need to have the address ON YOUR ID, which the state apparently does not do for those on the reservation. So even though they probably have a 911 house number, it's not on the license because it's not their mailing address - that is a PO box because the letter carriers do not deliver to that address. So they should not enact this law until the state updates all IDs for free.

Why are you so quick to deny people the right to vote just on the "he-said" of some guy who's never met them?

 

[Rhea]

Since no one has mentioned it yet, two of the liberal justices were part of the majority decision upholding the voter ID law.

Liberal? Or North Dakota Democrat?