{"id":53519,"date":"2022-10-17T16:08:13","date_gmt":"2022-10-17T23:08:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=53519"},"modified":"2022-10-17T16:08:13","modified_gmt":"2022-10-17T23:08:13","slug":"when-they-get-to-vote-native-americans-swing-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=53519","title":{"rendered":"When they Get to Vote, Native Americans Swing Elections"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By<\/span>Peter White<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Indian lawyers have been winning lawsuits against gerrymandering and restrictive voting laws in Arizona, New Mexico, Montana, North Dakota, and Alaska. Despite more laws\u00a0making it harder to vote<\/a>, Native Americans keep on casting ballots.<\/p>\n

Native American voters \u201chave the power to swing a host of elections this coming year,\u201d says Jacqueline De Leon, a member of the Isleta Pueblo and staff attorney with the Native American Rights Fund (NARF).\u00a0Which explains, she adds, \u201cthe ongoing hostility towards Native Americans voting and\u00a0 a dramatic rise in laws that are aimed to make it difficult or impossible for Native Americans to vote.\u201d<\/p>\n

De Leon was speaking at a\u00a0news briefing on Indian Country\u2019s fight for fair representation<\/a>\u00a0cosponsored by Ethnic Media Services, Indian Country Today (ICT), and First Nations Experience (FNX). ICT Editor-at Large Mark Trahant moderated.<\/p>\n

Even though the eligible Native American voting population is small \u2013 less than 1% according to Trahant \u2013 Native Americans have already swung elections for Senator Lisa Murkowski and Representative Mary Peltola in Alaska, Senator Jon Tester in Montana, and former Senator Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota. Voting age Indians could swing elections in Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, and Nevada in the coming year.<\/p>\n

In 2020 De Leon co-authored a 200-page NARF report called\u00a0\u201cObstacles at Every Turn<\/a>\u201d<\/em>\u00a0which explains why Native American voter turnout has historically been so low.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt details the absurd structural barriers that Native Americans face,\u201d De Leon says.<\/p>\n

They include far away polling places, few voter registration opportunities, lack of residence mail delivery that makes registering or receiving a ballot difficult or impossible. Reliable transportation over rough roads to vote in November is always a problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason these barriers exist is because of the power and potential of the Native American vote,\u201d De Leon says.<\/p>\n

Arizona<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Last year Arizona\u2019s Congressional District 2 was redrawn by the legislature, replacing a large number of Hispanic voters near Tucson with voters in Yavapai County which historically has not been friendly to Indian tribes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was no need to do that,\u201d according to Derrick Beetso, director of the Indian Gaming and Self Governance program at Arizona State University\u2019s Sandra Day O\u2019Connor College of Law in Phoenix.\u00a0 There had been no huge influx or exodus of people in these communities. \u201cYou\u2019ll see the same grandma living in the same house.\u00a0 All the same tribal members live where they\u2019ve lived and all the different individuals that are impacted in Yavapai county and other counties still live in the same area.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only conclusion we are led to believe is that it was done for political purposes rather than to make sure that everyone\u2019s vote counts,\u201d Beetso said.<\/p>\n

North Dakota<\/strong><\/h2>\n

In 2017 Republicans passed a new voter ID law in North Dakota that disenfranchises Native Americans because they can\u2019t put a residential address on their voter registration application.<\/p>\n

Native American voters use post office boxes as an address and there are no post offices on reservations. It\u2019s one of what De Leon calls \u201cabsurd structural barriers\u201d that also makes it difficult for Native Americans to vote by mail. The Supreme Court let stand that law and in 2018 Sen. Heidi Heitkamp lost her seat to Republican Kevin Cramer.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur biggest challenge is making contact with voters in remote rural communities. Back in 2018 there were a lot of organizations here and we were able to turn out more than 50 percent of the native vote in North Dakota,\u201d says Nicole Donaghy. She is a Hunkpapa Lakota from the Standing Rock Sioux Nation and Executive Director of North Dakota Native Voice.<\/p>\n

But since then voting has become more cumbersome. In 2021, 21 bills were proposed to change voting laws. But only two were passed. \u201cWe worked alongside NARF and our tribal leaders to play defense against the ever-growing attempts to create these voting laws.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2021 the North Dakota legislature drew election maps but there were no hearings in Indian Country. Donaghy organized people to testify in Bismark, the state capital.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were able to create two split house districts in North Dakota which was a huge win.\u201d<\/p>\n

Donaghy says there are a record number of Native Americans (10) running for office in 2022. N.D. Native Vote is using a GIS-based digital platform in its\u00a0Pledge to Vote<\/em>\u00a0campaign.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can see in real time heat maps of where people are pledging to vote and also help guide us to where we need to focus our canvas.\u201c<\/p>\n

There is only one polling place per county and none of the polling places on reservations offer early voting. Donaghy is organizing poll watchers to protect against the kind of voter intimidation that occurred in the 2018 election.<\/p>\n

Alaska<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The biggest success story in Indian Country redistricting is Alaska.<\/p>\n

For the first time in Alaska, two Native Americans served on the 5-member redistricting board. Nicole Borromeo, executive vice president and general counsel for the Alaska Federation of Natives, was one of them.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has been the fairest, most transparent process we have ever had in the state,\u201d Borromeo says.<\/p>\n

Borromeo, who hails from McGrath in the Alaskan interior, learned the software and mapped 4-10 hours a day for about a month. She drafted 40 house district maps that were paired with 20 senate district maps<\/p>\n

Borromeo says it was a very nonpartisan process until one board member tried to gerrymander two senate districts near Anchorage. There was a lawsuit and the case went to the state Supreme Court. It set a legal precedent, holding that gerrymanders violate the state constitution. Another attempt to gerrymander also failed.<\/p>\n

There was some backroom dealing until the Supreme Court ordered the board to adopt the maps it approved. It approved Borromeo\u2019s version of the election maps.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ByPeter White Oct 17, 2022 Indian...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-u-s-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53519"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53520,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53519\/revisions\/53520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}