Supreme Court Makes It Harder for Tribal North Dakotans to Vote

[laughing dog]

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.

If you had bothered to actually read the story, it refers to "disportionately affecting Native Americans". Do you have any evidence that Native Americans tend to vote Republican?

Did you even bother to think that this also might be an attempt to stifle the ability of Native Americans to vote for local officials or to vote against local initiatives?

 

[RavenSky]

Interesting update on Rachel Maddow's show tonight...

Tim Purdon, former U.S. State Attorney and currently an attorney representing the Spirit Lake tribe, North Dakota does not have any voter registration. In years past, you show up at the polls and vote. There is no voter registration rolls for anyone to check ID against. Even now, with the new legislation, anyone with a photo ID can vote that includes a DOB and a home address is supposed to be allowed to vote.

On the one hand, state officials claim that they are unable to easily tell residents what their addresses are.

But on the other hand, they apparently now have some mysterious "voter list" that they are using to tell voters their newly obtain ID cards with home addresses are not valid.

In one example, family members living in the same house were told that they had two different addresses on the mystery list, and were told their photo ID was rejected and they couldn't vote.

 

[Derec]

If you had bothered to actually read the story, it refers to "disportionately affecting Native Americans".

The article is tendentious. Surely the same problem that rural Indians have affects the non-Indian rural North Dakotans as well. Either that, or non-Indian rural communities solved the problem by assigning physical addresses. Something tribal governments can do just as easily.

Do you have any evidence that Native Americans tend to vote Republican?

Never claimed they did.

Did you even bother to think that this also might be an attempt to stifle the ability of Native Americans to vote for local officials or to vote against local initiatives?

In which case it's their own Indian leaders doing it to them.
I have long argued that the present system of reservations as special entities is antiquated and should be abolished. All tribal lands should be split into individual freeholds and any compensation for ceded territory should be distributed to individuals. After that, all Indians should be treated like any other American - no more, no less. Than reservation authorities will not be able to screw their own people by denying them a street address.

 

[zorq]

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.

Nope. I'm a US citizen and I'm not eligible to vote this year for a similar reason to these Native Americans. I don't have an address in the US anymore. The state where I'm registered to vote won't send me an absentee ballot without an official residence address in the state. I suppose that I could fly back to the US on election day and I might be able to vote in my previous district, but even that isn't guaranteed. But, I'm not going to fly back.

 

[bleubird]

http://www.elections.alaska.gov/Core/votingatthepollsonelectionday.php

In my state even a utility bill can be used to vote.

 

[Trausti]

North Dakota Dems Threaten Hunters with Loss of License for Voting

Randy Meissner, the licensing manager for the North Dakota Game & Fish Department, was similarly confused when asked about the ad.

“We’ve never heard of that,” Meissner said.

Senator Heidi Heitkamp, who is locked in a tight race for reelection with Republican representative Kevin Cramer, gave the North Dakota Democratic-NPL $3 million from her campaign’s war chest, which now appears to have at least partially financed a voter-suppression campaign.

It's meant to help the Democrat, so it's okay.

 

[Toni]

The article is tendentious. Surely the same problem that rural Indians have affects the non-Indian rural North Dakotans as well. Either that, or non-Indian rural communities solved the problem by assigning physical addresses. Something tribal governments can do just as easily.


Never claimed they did.

Did you even bother to think that this also might be an attempt to stifle the ability of Native Americans to vote for local officials or to vote against local initiatives?

In which case it's their own Indian leaders doing it to them.
I have long argued that the present system of reservations as special entities is antiquated and should be abolished. All tribal lands should be split into individual freeholds and any compensation for ceded territory should be distributed to individuals. After that, all Indians should be treated like any other American - no more, no less. Than reservation authorities will not be able to screw their own people by denying them a street address.

The US Post Office issues street addresses, not tribes. You can argue whatever you want about how tribal lands should be managed but since you are not a member you are just another ignorant white man trying to tell other people how to manage their lives when you can’t even manage yours or be bothered to know what you are talking about.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

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.

Nope. I'm a US citizen and I'm not eligible to vote this year for a similar reason to these Native Americans. I don't have an address in the US anymore. The state where I'm registered to vote won't send me an absentee ballot without an official residence address in the state. I suppose that I could fly back to the US on election day and I might be able to vote in my previous district, but even that isn't guaranteed. But, I'm not going to fly back.

You're not the resident of any state, you only get to vote in the one stateless election--president. I don't know the procedure.

 

[Underseer]

GOP voter cheating

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/

We have to make it harder for them to vote because they're not white, and this is America.

You're a bad person if you have a problem with things like this. America was never intended to be a representative government because this is a republic, not a democracy. [/conservolibertarian]