After Stunning Democratic Win, North Dakota Republicans Suppressed the Native American Vote
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Richard Brakebill voted in nearly every election of his adult life, a point of pride that began with his return from the Navy more than three decades ago. But in November 2014, when Brakebill drove through the open farmland of the North Dakota countryside to the Rolla City Hall, a poll worker refused to let him vote.
Elvis Norquay was another reliable presence at the polls, despite being a Vietnam War veteran who bounced between homeless shelters for years. Norquay often hitched a ride into town to vote at the local Knights of Columbus Hall, where poll workers would vouch for him—that is, until November 2014, when he, too, was turned away.
Lucille Vivier had no driver’s license, let alone a car, but she almost always found transportation to her nearby polling place. In November 2014, Vivier was denied a ballot, even though one of the poll workers was someone she knew since she was 5-years-old.
Officially, these voters lost out at the polls four years ago, because they failed to show identification, as required by a new state law at the time. But that was not the only thing the would-be voters have in common: Each is Native American, and each hails from one of the most heavily Democratic counties in this deep-red state.
Over the last six years, Republicans in North Dakota adopted a flurry of legislation that effectively revoked the right to vote for thousands of Native Americans and other Democratic voters, according to an investigation of court records, internal emails among state officials, as well as interviews with voters and lawmakers on both sides of the issue.
Six Native American plaintiffs challenged North Dakota’s law in court, including Brakebill, Norquay, and Vivier. A federal district-court judge sided with the plaintiffs in challenges to two different iterations of the state’s voter-ID laws, finding the laws’ requirements to be disproportionately burdensome on Native American voters.
In his most recent ruling in April, Judge Daniel Hovland issued an injunction broadening the range of acceptable ID for voters, calling voting a “most cherished right” for “thousands of Native Americans who currently lack a qualifying ID and cannot obtain one.”
“No eligible voter, regardless of their station in life, should be denied the opportunity to vote,” Hovland wrote.
In light of the ruling, Native Americans in North Dakota will now be able to present additional types of ID to vote or prove their identity, including the federal tribal ID that many Native Americans already possess. The ruling also allows them to use more readily accessible tribal documents to supplement their IDs if they need to prove their identity or address. This will make it considerably easier for Native Americans, who tend to vote for Democratic candidates, to cast their ballots.
The ruling will stand for the 2018 elections, since the state legislature does not reconvene until afterward. This should boost to the electoral prospects of Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp, who had the overwhelming support of tribal voters in her 2012 campaign and relied on them to help her narrowly win the election. (The ruling does include an additional wrinkle, however, as it also permitted the state to remove a provision allowing voters without ID to sign affidavits affirming their identity, a voting system that allowed college students to vote with relative ease.)
he voter-ID legislation, which North Dakota Republicans introduced within two months of Heitkamp’s unexpected victory by just under 3,000 votes in 2012, was supposed to deny ballots to double voters, non-citizens, and fraudsters, but Dan Ruby, a state representative, acknowledged that Heitkamp’s victory made it a priority. The prospect of losing an election in a state Republicans otherwise dominated—they held every statewide office and both legislative chambers—served as a wake-up call. “I think that shined a light on it in a way that it was decided that now we should fix the issue,” Ruby told me.
Ruby adamantly denied that the bill had been introduced to suppress Native American votes. “We hear the other side say, ‘They want to suppress the Native Americans from voting.’ Nobody’s said that,” Ruby said. “I’ve never heard one person say, ‘Yup, we need to keep certain people that vote against us out.’”
In practice, however, the legislation ensnared Native Americans like Brakebill, who viewed their vote as an extension of their patriotism. “I was in the service, and this is the way they want to treat me when I go vote?” Brakebill asked me.
His concern was hardly unique. After the North Dakota bill that forced voters to present ID at the polls passed, turnout declined sharply in areas with high Native American populations.
In Rolette County, home to the Turtle Mountain Reservation, voter turnout reached 45 percent in 2010, resembling the overall statewide rate. But by 2014, the first midterm election held under the new Republican voting law, voter turnout in Rolette County plummeted to 33 percent even as it held steady statewide. In effect, that translated into fewer Democratic votes that year, a big win for the state’s Republicans.
North Dakota offers a snapshot of a sweeping effort unfolding in legislatures across the country, where Republicans say they are seeking to curb voter fraud, despite a lack of evidence that such a problem exists. Judge Hovland’s recent ruling made this clear: “The reality is that the State of North Dakota in this lawsuit has failed to demonstrate any evidence of voter fraud in the past or present.”
In total, 34 states have some form of voter-ID law on the books, 13 of which were adopted since 2004. Many of the newer laws resemble model legislation drafted by conservative special interest groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC.
State Representative Randy Boehning, an ALEC member, was the only sponsor on all four voter-ID bills introduced since 2011. He also served as lead sponsor for the 2013 bill that a federal court barred the state from enforcing. Despite his ties to ALEC, he told me the bill he introduced has no ties to the organization.
“I’m a member of ALEC, and I’ve never used their legislation. I’ve worked with some of it, but this had nothing to do with ALEC. It was a spur-of-the-moment bill,” Boehning said. “There was no model legislation from ALEC. I know that’s the bogeyman out there, and I think that’s a crock.”
Nevertheless, ALEC had a model bill on voter ID similar to the bill Boehning introduced. Like the ALEC model, his original bill included a requirement for voters to show an unexpired photo ID to vote. Although the photo specification was removed, North Dakota’s law also removed alternative provisions that helped people who could not present qualifying ID still vote.
As the new state laws suppressed the vote in minority and Democratic-leaning communities, they have come under attack in court. Eight other states currently have pending or recently settled litigation that directly concerns the rights of Native Americans, including North Dakota, Arizona, and Nevada, which are all key battleground states in the upcoming midterm elections. In recent years, state and federal courts have struck down or weakened voter ID laws in five states—North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Arkansas, and now North Dakota.
These pending and recently settled suits may help swing pivotal elections that could determine control of both chambers of Congress. In Nevada, a 2016 ruling allowing tribal voters access to nearer polling places relied on the same provision of the Voting Rights Act that the recent ruling in North Dakota did. While the pending voter-ID lawsuit in Arizona does not focus on that section of the law, these rulings may help guide judges in defining the extent to which voter-ID laws excessively burden particular groups.
Native Americans might seem like an unlikely target of a voter suppression effort. There are only about 6.6 million Native Americans across the country, or approximately 2 percent of the population. But Native Americans vote overwhelmingly Democratic. In North Dakota, Heitkamp received over 80 percent of the vote in both of the state’s majority-Native American counties.
In three different legislative sessions since Heitkamp’s election, Republicans adopted bills that forced voters to present a state-issued ID with proof of residential address to vote. The most recent bill, which required voters to present their ID within six days of the election, passed last year. Taken together, this legislation took aim at two of the state’s more reliable Democratic voting bases: students and Native Americans.
College students have tended to skew more Democratic than the rest of the state population and tend to not have up-to-date state IDs, either due to their residence in dorms or the fact that they moved from out-of-state. Many Native Americans in North Dakota do not know or even have their residential addresses because they often live on reservations or in very rural areas and use P.O. boxes instead.
To Mark Jendrysik, a political scientist at the University of North Dakota, it is clear the effort was part of a concerted partisan move to stifle Democratic-leaning constituencies. “It was designed, in my view, to stop students from voting and making it difficult for Native Americans to vote, I think purposefully,” he said. “It suddenly became important after Heitkamp won. I don’t think it takes a genius to put two and two together.”
This battle over voting rights has been playing out as Heitkamp fights for reelection this fall. The election is expected to be close: President Donald Trump maintains approval ratings over 50 percent in the state, and Republicans have recruited a popular opponent to challenge her in Congressman Kevin Cramer.
It was just this sort of election-year fight that supporters of the voter-ID laws envisioned.
Emails from the North Dakota Secretary of State’s office obtained from a public records request show that the legislation’s Republican supporters did not view voter suppression as an unintended consequence. In a January 2017 email responding to concerns from a county auditor about the most recent voter-ID bill, which enabled voters to cast ballots without showing ID but still required ID to be presented within six days of the election, Deputy Secretary of State Jim Silrum, a Republican, touted the relative unlikelihood of voters returning to confirm their votes as counted as a positive selling point: “I hope the fact that many individuals who cast them will not likely come into your office later to verify their qualifications will put some of the fears to rest about long lines outside of your office in the six days after the election,” Silrum wrote.
Norquay, one of the plaintiffs in the most recent suit, said he was looking forward to voting for Heitkamp this November. Although Norquay is skeptical of the motives of those who introduced the law that prevented him from voting in 2014, he said the fact that Republicans are trying stop people like him from voting only shows how important their votes can be. “They take advantage of the lower class, like our votes don’t count or something like that,” Norquay told me. “I learned that they do. I know they do.”
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Who said the Indian Wars are over?? In the Dakota's, Native Americans are the most suppressed group in the U. S. as evidenced by this violation of Constitutional guarantees - the right to vote.
The same old shit continues..
So do you support the gop and your 'president '?
I seriously doubt even GOtP tactics like this won't deter him from flipping all the R levers on election day.
What's that got to do with ND?
To be fair, he was asking about support for the GOP who are the ones in ND discriminating against Native Americans, so the first part of the question does have quite a bit to do with North Dakota. The second half, not so much, though a Republican President is also the head of the GOP making their actions, no matter what State they happen in, his problem.
I don't think it's about indian wars specifically, but political warfare absolutely.
There is no reason a persons normal id shouldn't be sufficient to vote. And reciprocity in ID is what was removed in these laws. Recognizing the legal status of an individual as determined by someone in authority for doing such is the standard that laws like these invalidate.
It's a cheap shot where the majority is abusing the rights of the minority. Tyranny of the majority comes to mind? I hear that complaint a lot from my more conservative compatriots.
Probably time they stop supporting it don't you think?
It would be like Democrats trying to require a Green Peace or PETA ID card to vote. Republicans studied the types of ID different segments of the population were most likely to carry. Then they introduced laws that restricted voting to only the ID cards most likely to be carried by middle income white Republicans and least likely to be carried by college students, Native Americans, black Americans, Latino Americans, the very poor, disabled and elderly because those are all the classes who traditionally vote Democrat.
In North Carolina, the courts found Republican legislators had requested data on voting patterns by race and, with that data in hand, drafted a law that would "target African-Americans with almost surgical precision,".
If 60% of middle income white Americans vote Republican and only 40% vote Democrat, Republicans know that all they have to do to win is disenfranchise the other groups who tend to vote Democrat, and that's exactly what these voter ID laws were created to do. They have zero, zilch, nada, nothing to do with trying to prevent undocumented immigrants or any other non-citizen from voting. That was a complete lie, a total attempt at a Trojan horse that only an idiot would ever actually believe.
You didn't miss this did ya?
I don't think Greepeace or PETA are valid forms of common legal ids, it would be the same as using my masonic membership card as a valid drivers license...
Legal reciprocity is the issue. One the alt right is using illegally and the courts are rightfully overturning. none of the id's we mentioned GP, PETA or Masonry have legal standing outside their respective organizations therefore they don't count....
I was trying to make a point, I wasn't saying those are or should be valid forms of ID. I picked "Green Peace" and PETA as examples of groups conservatives are least likely to be members of because that's exactly what Republicans did. They found the types of ID that minority Americans are least likely to have and then attempted to write voter ID laws that disenfranchised those eligible voters for no other reason than they are likely to vote Democrat. If young college students were more likely to vote Republicans, you know student ID's would instantly be considered acceptable. If Native Americans tended to vote Republican they would eliminate the requirement to have a residence address listed on a form of ID since few Native Americans who live on reservations have such addresses.
Personally, I would like the Presidential election to occur every four years on tax day, and your choice for President will be on your tax returns so everyone who files taxes gets a vote. Even those who don't work or don't pay any taxes still have to file taxes, and I want the largest number of voters possible for the Presidential election, no matter what party or what walk of life they're from. And of course the outcome would be based on the popular vote since States already get equal representation with two Senators each. So every vote would carry equal weight instead of some person living in a low population State getting 3 or 4 times the vote power. All other State elections could remain as they are minus any onerous Republican voter ID laws.
I got the point, that should have been obvious, and I agreed with what they did was illegal. I just pointed out the legal reason what they did was illegal, and rightfully overturned.
As far as your position on the Presidential races and popular vote? the issue isn't straight vote totals, neither is it the EC.
it's the fact that most democrat voters elect to live in the big city. and the founders when crafting the constitution recognized that as a problem for not only the individual citizen but for the separate states also.
So the simple solution was to base the vote within the state based upon their districts which are a proportion of the population determined by the last census.
The citizen votes within his district so his vote counts, his vote determines which way his elector votes and the elector is required to vote the way the district votes although there has been a number of times the elector has not done that the states involved have decided not to take legal action to punish the practice. the State have the authority to decide how those votes count towards the electoral college, most states deciding to have them counted en-masse as one block of votes. this is not an effort to manipulate the vote, it is an effort to make campaigning easier for the politicians. ie. They don't have to campaign in states that are not going to vote their way which makes the battle ground state where the election really happens. It also creates the "fly-over state where campaigning doesn't matter. The founders wanted each elector to vote his district but that made it VERY difficult on the political parties to mount campaigns coherently and be consistent with party dogma.
AS far as district totals of voters? they chose where they go to live and they deal with the number of voters in that district so if they feel that their vote doesn't count maybe they should move to another district where they feel their vote is worth more...
The democrats realizing this after the last election actually started to formulate a proposal to get their members to actually do that (move to a different district to throw the vote in another district their way) and quickly found out that their voters like it right where they are even though it disadvantages them.
Home is home so to speak.
The system we have is eminently fair, the only way to make it fairer is to force electors to vote their district instead of allowing the state parties to take advantage of the system and make election easier on them...
Force the politicians to campaign in more locations and answer to more voters.
What are you arguing, that that is a bad thing?
Fucking ridiculous. Whats next...only landowners can vote?
Sadly I only see things like this getting worse. Some of these suppressive laws have been struck down, for now, yet trump and the republicans have been packing the courts.
That's what you get from the gop being in charge. Voter Suppression! The damn gop does not want people to vote. Democrats do. What does that tell you?