• Native Americans fighting back against North Dakota voter ID law
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https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/native-americans-fighting-back-against-north-dakota-voter-id-law-n926326 FORT BERTHOLD INDIAN RESERVATION, N.D. — For more than a year, Tiffany Hunts Along has lived in a cherrywood mobile home high on a ridge in western North Dakota, where she knows every jagged hilltop and every flat field. But when asked last week about her street address, she was stumped. She never bothered to learn her street's name — until now. Hunts Along plans to cast a ballot in Tuesday's midterm election, but a change made by North Dakota lawmakers has forced her and an estimated 5,000 tribal citizens who may have IDs with a post office box address to obtain either a new state-issued or tribal identification showing their street address in order to vote. The requirement — meant to prevent voter fraud, state officials say — went into effect in early October. Nowhere in North Dakota is the registration process more complex — and urgent — than on reservations. Voter rights groups are scrambling to ensure residents understand why they might be turned away at the polls when they present an ID. Absentee ballots must list a home address as well, not a post office box. The 11th-hour push comes amid a competitive U.S. Senate race in solidly red North Dakota, where the stakes are high: Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat, won by fewer than 3,000 votes in 2012. Native Americans, who largely vote Democratic, helped to tip that race in her favor, and she earned more than 80 percent of the vote in the state's majority-Native counties. Recent polls, however, have given her GOP challenger, Rep. Kevin Cramer, a double-digit lead. North Dakota is the only state in the nation that doesn't require residents to register before voting — long held as a point of pride in this sparsely populated prairieland. In previous elections, voters could use a variety of documents to prove they are state residents and have a current address. But after Heitkamp won in 2012, the state's Republican-led Legislature decided stricter rules were necessary in the event of voter fraud. Republican state Rep. Dan Ruby told The Nation that his party's loss "shined a light" on the issue of strengthening voter ID registration and made it a priority, but denied any bill was introduced in order to suppress the Native vote. Another lawsuit was filed late Tuesday in U.S. District Court by the Spirit Lake Tribe and six people against Secretary of State Al Jaeger, claiming that having to find and assign addresses has been "incomplete, contradictory and prone to error on reservations." Elsewhere among North Dakota's tribes, the mad dash to get citizens new IDs is gaining traction. At the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, whose reservation is about 15 miles from the Canadian border, some 250 people showed up in a single day to get new cards. The tribe's ID printing machine became so overheated that it melted cards, tribal officials said, so they brought in four new ones.
http://www.startribune.com/thousands-of-native-voters-in-north-dakota-getting-free-ids/499165381/ "We're at our best in crisis," said Phyllis Young, an organizer on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation for the Lakota People's Law Project, adding that the issue "is only making us more aware of our rights, more energized, and more likely to vote this November." Alexis Davis, 19, chairwoman of the Turtle Mountain Youth Council, has an ID with a residential street address but said many of her friends do not. The voter ID issue has made them more resolved to be a part of the election process, she said. "It's like, oh you want to make this harder for me? Oh, you want to take away my rights?" she said. "It's like, no, now I'm going to fight that, and I'm going to be more resilient, and I'm going to make sure that I'm going to go vote." I swear to god if Heitkamp wins because they increased Native American turnout due to their bullshit voter ID
North Dakota has automatic voter registration by-the-by, and you are allowed to use ANY form of government ID/utility bills to show you live at a certain residence. No one will question you on it. This crap about this being discrimination is a big sandwich of nothing, likewise the reason this law was even brought up in the first goddamn place is a big shit sandwich as well. Also for anyone actually hopeful that Heidi Heitkamp will somehow keep her position here, she probably won't. She royally fucked herself by releasing the names of sexual abuse victims on a campaign ad, allied herself with anti-Measure 3[Marijuana Legalization], and has been one of the people pushing us to slap people on the wrist for the NoDAPL shitshow. Seriously, as someone who actually voted for her back in 2014, she can go fuck herself with Kevin Kramer in a happy boat in the middle of the Missouri. Both of them are bought and sold by oil and coal interests.
Heitkamp seems better for the simple fact Cramer doesn't believe sexual harassment should have keeped Kav off the Supreme Court, even if the allegations are true. I'd vote for her for the simple reason of keeping Trump in check and preventing any more asshole Federalist judges from being rammed in.
Yeah, nothing suspicious at all about a law being enacted right before the mid-terms that inconveniences a demographic that tends to vote Democrat. I'm sure the legislators had honest and faithful intentions here.
Especially when they had to have known that apparently Native Americans don't really care about addresses on reservations
I'm just giving info on what I hear on the ground. Vast majority of North Dakotans hate her guts right now.
Vast majority of New Jerseyites hate Bob Menenedez too, but he and Heitkamp etc are the only thing keeping Trump and the GOP from completely filling the courts with Federalist Society clones, and making appointments to agencies.
Does North Dakota have a voter fraud problem? What exactly was wrong with the Natives listing their PO boxes? You have to justify legislation, you don't get to say "well just deal with it it's easy" because that's bullshit. Not everyone is aware that this is happening. You're forcing people to go through a needless bureaucratic process with room for error. The end result is simple: fewer people will vote Democrat. If you think it's bullshit why are you defending it?
Disgusting. Politicians and lawmakers who push for this shit are asking to be targeted for violence and harassment.
https://twitter.com/mjs_DC/status/1058077573551394823 Court thinks it's too close to the election
Tbh the fact that ND rez's dont have solidified street addressing like the rest of the fucking world causes a multitude of issues. If this gets the folks there to get off their asses and upgrade their communities to act like a first world country, then great. You never actually know if you have a voter fraud problem until you enact measures against it. This is a very reasonable measure against it. Why should safeguards be built for extreme minority groups that refuse to conform to modern standards? Theres a million options for them but they cant take advantage of any of them because of their tribal government's own mismanagement.
Because this has nothing to do with voter fraud and everything to do with the Republican-led legislature suppressing the Democratic vote. Are you going to say with a straight face that's not what's happening? And no, that's not how it works. If you can't prove there's a problem with voter fraud then you shouldn't be making people go through a needless bureaucratic process. You're stopping more legitimate people from voting than you are actually preventing fraud- which is precisely the intention.
I'm sorry, but I'm not sure I see the logic
You can't really know if people are trying to vote fraudulently if you have no consistent way of checking.
Good thing there is a way of checking. These Native Americans have valid, state-issued IDs. You could, you know, look at them.
That's stupendously dumb.
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