North Dakota’s New ID Law Could Disenfranchise Native American Voters

Native Americans in North Dakota are suing the state for a new voter identification law that disproportionally affects them.

On October 9^th, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a state law requiring all North Dakotan residents to provide name, address and date of birth when they cast a ballot. It means that voters there have to quickly adapt to different rules during the midterm election next week than during the primaries a couple months ago.

Many see the change as an intentional effort to disenfranchise Native Americans who live on reservations and either do not have a formal address or never use it. Buildings and streets on the reservations are not numbered. Most houses are never assigned an address. For decades they rely on post offices for mails and simply refer to landmarks for directions.

Research by the Native American Rights Fund shows that they are twice as likely as an average resident to not have a formal form of identification. 5,000 of them lack necessary information under the new law and 2,300 of them do not possess supporting documentation.

In response to the allegedly discriminatory law, community leaders of various tribes are joining forces and making substantial efforts to protect Native Americans’ voting rights.

“We believe the requirement of a physical, residential property with a street address was intended to disenfranchise Native American voters,” said a joint press release by four different tribes. “We will not be silenced by the blatant efforts to rob our people of our voice.”

Non-profit advocacy groups are also scrambling to raise money to help Native American residents get the information they need to vote. An organization named Four Directions suggested to the Republican Secretary of State Al Jaeger to station tribal leaders at every voting booth to hand out ID information on the spot.

But Jaeger told The New York Times that he would not endorse the plan: “It is inappropriate for me to do so because it is a legal question that is beyond the authority of this office as to whether a sovereign tribe has those powers within their jurisdiction.”

Four Directions, however, is striving to carry out the plan despite Jaeger’s response. “Tribal governments have the inherent sovereignty to issue residential addresses to any tribal member who may lack such an address,” said Oliver and Barbara Semans, co-executive directors of the group, implying that Jaeger could not stop them.

Historically North Dakota has relatively loose voter registration laws. Yet state officials have been trying to strengthen its policies since 2013. After a federal judge ruled earlier this yet that the new law disproportionately affected Native American voters, an appeal was filed against it in September. In October, the Supreme Court made the final decision to allow the street address requirement to take effect before midterm elections.

“Risk of disenfranchisement is large,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg revealed.

Supporters of the new law believe it is unfair to criticize the state for merely trying to filter out voters who do not meet the qualifications. “I don’t know why North Dakota is being singled out in being somewhat unusual,” said Jaeger. He pointed out that North Dakota was not alone in carrying out such policies and most states already have similar requirements.