North Dakota voter ID law revived in major setback to Native American voters - Polidicks

https://thinkprogress.org/north-dakota-voter-id-214115bf6749/ A federal appeals court on Monday sided with North Dakota in a lawsuit over the state’s voter ID law, presenting a significant burden to Native American voters ahead of the November election. A three-judge panel of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals stayed a lower court’s injunction which had required the state to accept a longer list of potential forms of identification at the polls, including IDs that show a voter’s “current mailing address” instead of their “current residential street address.” The court found that the state would be “irreparably harmed by the injunction during the general election in November, 2018,” according to the order. Many homes on Native American reservations lack traditional postal addresses. Instead, Native voters often rely on P.O. boxes which could be located outside their precincts. Furthermore, there are no motor-vehicle license offices on North Dakota’s reservations, making it difficult for Native voters to obtain the necessary forms of ID. Native Americans make up more than five percent of North Dakota and represent a critical demographic in the sparsely populated state, where Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) is trailing in the polls as she campaigns for reelection. According the AP, a federal judge had previously found that “nearly 49 percent of Native Americans who lacked a qualifying ID also lacked sufficient supplemental documentation, so around 2,300 would be prevented from voting.” In their lawsuit, Native voters alleged that the ID law violated their constitutional right to vote. A federal judge in April 2018 ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, finding that certain parts of the law presented “a clear ‘legal obstacle’ inhibiting the opportunity to vote.” In issuing the injunction, the judge cited the “public interest in protecting the most cherished right to vote for thousands of Native Americans who currently lack a qualifying ID and cannot obtain one.” But North Dakota’s Republican Secretary of State Al Jaeger appealed, arguing that the law is necessary to protect against voter fraud and that voters may use a mailing address that’s in a different precinct from their residence. The state worried that voters could cast ballots in the wrong precincts and sway local elections. Only black people vote Democrat more than Native Americans, there's 40,000 of them living in North Dakota, and Heitkamp won by 3,000 votes in 2012.

"irreparable harm to the state because of fraud" when they cannot actually prove fraud even though they can prove it disenfranchised a large population of native americans and this comes less than 40 days before the polls open when the first verdict came 6 months ago

This is so fucked up, I've had times where my legal tribal id wasn't accepted and it fucked me over but not being able to vote in your own country because some racist shitgeads wanted to keep mexicans out and natives/the poor in general got hit as collateral damage is fucking asinine and shows how much of a shithole the us government is and always has been.

I'm so sorry, the south is still pissed they had to let black people vote, wouldn't be surprised conservative cunts from Arizona to North Dakota are pissed Native Americans are able to.

Again? I keep hearing about North Carolina and North Dakota doing everything they can to take the right to vote for minorities. If the federal government wasn't in the hands of degenerates, it'd be reasonable to demand that legislation be passed blocking those repeat offender states from making any additional changes to their voting laws for a couple hundred years or so.

Republicans continue to prove that they're fucked up hypocrites who are against democracy.

Tbh some of them deserve to be on the receiving end of some militant violence over this crap. A good purge of the US political spectrum is long overdue starting with these self-serving parasites.

Apparently it's not enough that our country completely fucked over Native Americans in every meaningful way, and that as a result so many of them are unemployed, struggle with alcohol and drug abuse, and have the lowest life expectancy of just about anyone in the states.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 actually made it so that the south had to run voting laws by the federal governement, until the SCOTUS struck that part down in 2013. Ginsburg remarked "It's like throwing your umbrella away because it's not raining."

And now it's fucking hailing.

Five years after the ruling, nearly a thousand polling places had been closed in the country, with many of the closed polling places in predominantly African-American counties. Research shows that the changing of voter locations and reduction in voting locations can reduce voter turnout. Thomas helped disenfranchise black people.

https://twitter.com/chrisgeidner/status/1049754018032041986 Kavanaugh did not take part in this decision. The liberal justices Breyer and Sotomayor (appointed by Clinton and Obama) joined in the majority decision.