Native Votes Went Missing in North Carolina. Tribal Leaders Vow that Won’t Happen Again Next Week.
For voting-rights advocates in Indian Country, the NC-9 do-over vote is a dry run ahead of the 2020 election.
Still, even as intimidation and suppression efforts like the one in North Carolina are unabated, recent history shows that Natives can successfully fight back against them.
For example, voter suppression was hugely in evidence last year in North Dakota, after the Republican legislature passed a law requiring voters present IDs with a residential mailing address when voting.
The law stripped many Native Americans of their ability to vote because many tribal members do not have a formal home address on reservations and instead rely on P.O. boxes.
Standing Rock tribal members and workers from the voting rights group Four Directions riding in a bus that drove tribal members to the polls on Election Day, Nov. 6, 2018. (CREDIT: DANIELLE MCLEAN FOR THINKPROGRESS)
Native Americans overcome North Dakota’s restrictive voter ID laws, turn out in record numbers
Tribal officials scrambled to print out new IDs with mailing addresses after the Supreme Court allowed the law to remain in effect a month before November’s election.
Workers at volunteers drove members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to the polls in a rickety old bus and successfully created tribal IDs on the spot for voters that did not have one on election day.
In the end, Native Americans voters in North Dakota turned out in record numbers. Indian activists hope that will prove to be the case again when North Carolina holds its repeat election next week.
Danielle McLean is an investigative reporter at ThinkProgress covering criminal and unethical activity by the Trump administration and the president’s campaign. McLean is the chairperson of SPJ’s Freedom of Information Committee. She previously worked as an investigative reporter for the Bangor Daily News and covered a number of Massachusetts city halls for several newspapers including the Somerville Journal, the Milford Daily News, and the Boston Globe’s website, Boston.com. She has won the Maine Press Association’s political reporting award, as well as the New England Newspaper and Press Association’s government, transportation, business and economic, and courts and crime reporting awards.
This story was originally published by ThinkProgress.
Image: Reuters