As facetious as it might sound, the lawmakers in North Dakota could be included on a list of anti-Indian hate groups (“Why don’t anti-Indian groups count as hate groups?” HCN, 11/26/18). The evidence: North Dakota’s 2017 voter ID law, which requires strict forms of identification, including street addresses. The law disenfranchises voters on American Indian reservations, where street addresses often do not exist and many residents get mail by post office box. The law requires voters to have a street address to constitute a “valid” ID for registration. This potentially affects 20 percent of the average voter turnout in the state.
State legislators created the law following Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp’s victorious election in 2012 by a mere 3,000 votes. In that election, she received heavy support from Native Americans in the state. (Heitkamp lost in the 2018 midterms, to Republican Kevin Kramer, by more than 35,000 votes.) An initial challenge to the law last year overturned key provisions of the legislation, enabling more Native Americans to vote, but the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a district court ruling in September that reinstated the stricter law. Now we have entire swaths of land out West — reservations — where the basic right of American citizens, the right to vote, has been made prohibitively difficult.
Pete Simon
Arvada, Colorado
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Voter exclusion.
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