Judge: New voter laws "unconstitutional" and permanently enjoined - ICT
By: ICT
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The Montana laws would have ended Election Day voter registration, changed voter ID requirements, and banned paid ballot collection. They are now permanently blocked from going into effect.
- Author: Montana Free Press
- Publish date: Oct 3, 2022
Montana Legislature (Photo by Mark Trahant, Indian Country Today)
The Montana laws would have ended Election Day voter registration, changed voter ID requirements, and banned paid ballot collection. They are now permanently blocked from going into effect.
Alex Sakariassen
Montana Free Press
A district court judge in Billings Friday permanently struck down three election administration laws in Montana, declaring that eliminating Election Day voter registration, implementing new voter identification requirements and barring paid ballot collection are unconstitutional.
The order, issued by Yellowstone District Court Judge Michael Moses, closes the book on the court's deliberations in a consolidated lawsuit that started shortly after Republicans in the Montana Legislature passed the laws in spring 2021. The lawsuit was filed against Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen by the Montana Democratic Party, Western Native Voice, Montana Youth Action and a coalition of tribal and youth advocacy groups. Moses presided over a nine-day trial last month, during which he acknowledged the time-sensitive nature of the case given Montana's upcoming election and assured both sides he would reach a decision as quickly as possible.
In his ruling, Moses noted that the law ending Election Day voter registration — House Bill 176 — "severely burdens the right to vote of Montana voters, particularly Native American voters, students, the elderly, and voters with disabilities." He reached a similar conclusion regarding House Bill 530's prohibition on paid ballot collection. As for Senate Bill 169, which required student IDs to be accompanied by a second form of identification at the polls, Moses wrote that the law "violates the Equal Protection Clause by imposing heightened and unequal burdens on Montana's youngest voters."
All three laws had already been subject to a preliminary injunction issued by Moses this spring and upheld by the Montana Supreme Court this month. Moses' order vacates that temporary injunction, replacing it with a permanent ban on enforcement of the laws ahead of the Nov. 8 general election. A fourth law challenged in the lawsuit, which barred counties from sending mail ballots to minors who would turn 18 by Election Day, was already declared unconstitutional by Moses this summer.
Moses' ruling was announced just before 5 p.m. on Friday.
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I believe this is now the third law in the past three years that was passed in MT restricting voter rights that have been overturned by the court.
South Dakota recently settled with the Tribes on another bill.
create unconstitutional laws on the taxpayer dime, walk them thru the judicial maze on the taxpayer dime, watch their legislative miscarriages get overturned, and then avoid any fiscal responsibility for their own misguided incompetence by having the taxpayers pick up the tab in the end.
Sadly, that seems to be the way it works.
I'm glad somebody in Montana has their head screwed on straight
We do know that the Montana legislature doesn't have their head screwed on but they certainly have some loose nuts there.
it's all the sheep DNA in their family trees...
LOL, could be.
In my state (North Cacalackey) we also have a Republican legislature that passes unconstitutional voter restriction laws. The courts strike down the laws and the state appeals. They always hire the same Republican law firm which always loses the cases. They always appeal to a higher court and, of course, they lose again. It seems to be a way to funnel taxpayer money to rich Republican lawyers.
They have also gerrymandered Congressional districts and the NC Supreme Court denied their map because it's so obviously racist. They have appealed the case to SCOTUS. Because of the current makeup of SCOTUS, they may actually win this one. Butt, win or lose, the rich lawyers get richer. Is this "justice"?
I have friends with the Lumbee and Eastern Band of Cherokee that keeps me updated on the ignorance happening there.
I find it quite interesting that many on the right claim constantly there is no voter suppression yet here we have it in spades. One of many cases.
I have to question the claim of voter suppression here. These laws were passed in the spring of 2021, so there was no state or federal elections that occurred after the law. Was there a local election and you have numbers of how many people were prevented from voting? Without an actual election then the claim of voter suppression is just guessing at an outcome without any proof.
I've not seen anybody here talking about the three provisions as listed in the article.
Ending Election Day voter registration - can you explain how this "severely burdens the right to vote of Montana voters, particularly Native American voters, students, the elderly, and voters with disabilities." Not being able to walk in, register and vote all in the same day but having to plan ahead to register in advance doesn't seem like a severe burden to me. With all the campaigning that goes on it's hard to believe that anybody could claim that they didn't know election day was coming up. If someone wants to have a beer or two while watching an NFL game, they have to plan ahead and buy their beer on Saturday as the liquor stores are state run and are closed on Sunday.
House Bill 530's prohibition on paid ballot collection - as the State of Montana does allow for mail-in balloting, why does prohibiting ballot harvesting cause a severe burden on people? Are there any numbers on this or is this once again a case of "we believe it to be true so it must be true"?
Required student IDs to be accompanied by a second form of identification at the polls - do student ID's at Montana colleges also indicate if the student is a resident of the state or is an out-of-state student? It's been a long time since I went to college but back then the student ID did not list my home state.
TBH I do not see voter suppression here, just partisan politics in action. None of these laws seems to really indicate a severe burden yet that is what the judge has proclaimed. And to void a law that was passed in the spring of 2021 at this time when early ballots are about to be mailed out seems to be judicial activism to me. This should have been handled earlier so that state agencies could better plan or put off until after the elections.
1. Same day registration.
Many reservations are many miles from polling places requiring long drives if there are no polling placse close to or on the rez. To register would require two trips. Take into account that many of the people on the rez do not have a car.
2. As explained in my comment above many people do not have cars so if one person has a car they can gather ballots to take in. Those without a car would be unable to vote with out this provision.
3. I do not know if student ID shows home state or residency.
I'm sure you don't feel that it's suppression but this judge does and his first ruling came in came in the spring of this year, upheld by the MT supreme court this was a permanent injunction so everyone knew about this since the spring of 2022. The orginal law was passed in 2021 and the suit was filed shortly thereafter.
There have been two other cases in MT that directly affected NA that were struck down by the courts in 2020.
The other 2021 law blocked organized ballot collection on rural reservations (HB 530) , in spite of the 13th district court ruling as unconstitutional a similar anti-ballot collection law in 2020 in Western Native Voice v. Stapleton . Ballot collection services in Montana offer Native voters a reliable way to cast a vote from rural locations.
You'll note that this was declared unconstitutional in 2020 so they tried to get it through again. Stupid is as stupid does.
If you believe that it is judicial activism then that would have to apply to the lower courts and the MT Supreme court. Both MT and SD are bright red states so do you think that judicial activism takes place in Republican states?
Of course, there are also other states where this type of BS takes place, the latest being Nevada. Here is another example.
Thanks for the reply.
But Montana does also have mail-in registration, so a person can register without having to drive in for that first trip. However I can see being allowed to cast a provisional ballot and register at the same time, the ballot should not be counted until the registration is verified IMO.
Perhaps this would be less contentious if tribal leadership could develop some sort of process to "officially" collect ballots for transport. I just dislike the general ballot harvesting.
This one to me should be the least contentious. You need to be a resident of the state in order to vote and you should be able to show that you are a resident before you vote. If you can register and cast a regular ballot at the same time, it opens up the potential for illegal voting. That IMO is something that should be avoided.
I agree that more needs to be done to improve the process of voting both on reservations as well as the very rural areas of the country. It's easy in cities where you have a population grouped in close, not so easy when you have miles of empty space between homes. Leadership in our country continues to ignore problems and instead use the issues in a partisan effort to beat up the other side.
I've long been angry at the leadership of our country (federal, state and local as well as tribal governments) in that for us being the richest country on the planet we still have many people who live without electricity or running water in their homes. I can remember renting a vacation home about 15-20 years back in Rocky Point, Mexico. The home had a single solar panel on the roof, with batteries and an inverter in a storage room. The entire house was electric, had an electric range, dish washer and air conditioning, and it all ran from this solar panel system. Why haven't such systems been purchased and installed on reservation homes? I cannot say it's a solid fix in Montana, but it would work very well here in Arizona on the Navajo reservation. Running water can be a different issue, where the water table is a thousand feet or more below ground level. But it's still something that's been ignored by leadership in Washington. With all the money that has been wasted over the years on pointless wars, all of these issues could have been fixed several times over. (sorry, soapbox gets me every time.)
I guess nothing will get done so long as the two political parties can continue to use elections (and everything else) as a cudgel against the other side.
The native community has been overlooked and neglected for centuries by the US government. Every treaty has been broken, every promise has been broken and our vote has been suppressed for decades.I could type a hundred pages on just a couple of the items.
That said, I agree the amount of wasted money by both feds and state governments is mind-boggling. There is no reason in hell that many of the problems of both the tribes and the general population of the US could not be remedied with the amounts of wasted money.
I'm quite familiar with AZ. having friends in the White Mountain Apache community and also the Tohono O'odham community. A couple of my favorite places are ''The Point'' if it's still there in Phoenix and of course the Biltmore. Spent a few nights there tripping the light fantastic with my wife.
I don't understand the "paid" part.
Are we talking about financial compensation as opposed to volunteer?
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According to the law that was struck down it read ''any compensation'' which would/could include a person given gas money to drive around the rez and then into the ballot collecting station. The Crow reservation is 2 million acres and the Blackfoot rez is 1.5 million acres.
Additionally some areas of Montana the election officials will not put drop boxs on the Rez and in one case in MT that I am familiar with the drop boxes were removed 3 days before the election which resulted in a lawsuit by the tribe which they won.
So, yes, it is financial compensation. Many states allow ballot collecting with various rules per state laws.
But it can also include a person / group of people who are given money by a political party to collect ballots, it doesn't really differentiate. That's why I would much rather see tribal leadership set up a process to collect ballots from those who cannot get in to a polling station, even if tribal leadership gets a ballot collection box installed on the rez there can be difficulties for some just to get to that location.
What I would like to see is the state and local governments stop putting up barriers that are pure bullshit and are specifically designed to limit the native vote.
Don't blame the lawmakers. Blame the ignorant people who put them there.
Sadly, in a way, there are both one and the same, Buzz.