North Dakota “has taken steps to worsen” a “confusing and chaotic” situation for Native American voters in the state, alleges a new lawsuit.
The ongoing legal battle over the state’s voter ID law has emerged as a key issue as Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D) struggles to win re-election in a race that could determine control of the U.S. Senate.
At issue is a provision of the state’s voter ID law that requires the identification to include a residential street address, an obstacle for Native Americans, who often rely on P.O. boxes to receive mail and who may not even have a formal street address assigned to the place where they live.
The street address requirement faced a previous legal challenge, and a district court ruled in favor of the Native Americans bringing the lawsuit by relaxing the requirement so that IDs with a P.O. box or other non-residential addresses would suffice. The decision to water down the requirement was blocked by the appeals court ahead of the 2018 midterms — a move the Supreme Court also backed, letting the state enforce the original version.
The new law was passed by the state’s GOP legislature after Heitkamp, who draws support from tribal voters, eked out a 3,000-vote victory in 2012. She is on the ballot again next week.
The new lawsuit, against Secretary of State Alvin Jaeger, points to the appeals court opinion letting the full requirement go into effect, which signaled that the court would be open to addressing the requirement more narrowly and promised that “if any resident of North Dakota lacks a current residential street address and is denied an opportunity to vote on that basis, the courthouse doors remain open.”
The complaint is brought by Native Americans who have had trouble, for various reasons, obtaining an acceptable ID with a residential street address. The lawsuit also claims that absentee ballot applications have been rejected because the voter’s residential street address was deemed “invalid.”
According to the lawsuit, the problem for Native Americans now is that not only are they being asked to show an ID with a residential address, there is some confusion as to what happens if that address doesn’t match the address in the state’s records.
Election officials’ implementation of the law “has not only required a residential address on a qualifying ID but also required that the residential address match a ‘valid’ address according to the State,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit details the many issues the challengers have had in confirming what their “valid” residential address is, given that their communities sometimes don’t use street names, and that government officials appear to be using contradicting systems to determine an individual’s address. It also says that the state has not offered any resources to the Spirit Lake Tribe, one the challengers in the lawsuit, as it attempts to assist its members in obtaining acceptable IDs.
“If the address situation were not confusing and chaotic enough, Defendant Jaeger has taken steps to worsen the situation, refusing to provide public comment on whether poll workers will accept addresses printed on newly issued IDs, while simultaneously issuing statements that residential street addresses on IDs must not be ‘incorrect’—a warning that creates a particular chill for Native American voters, in light of the chaos and uncertainty caused by the rapid response to the newly effective law,” the lawsuit said.
Alvin’s office told TPM that it does “not comment on pending litigation.”
Read the complaint below:
Funny how the GOP blathers endlessly about “government intrusion into people’s lives” but is quite happy to place onerous burdens on those same people if it means preventing them from voting against the GOP.
It’s the Kobayashi maru of voting. smh
Bingo
I’d ask what the USPS uses for the address, as part of the 9/11 Patriot Act changes all RR addresses needed to convert to actual street addresses. I remember when I lived in NE some streets had 2 or 3 different names. Eventually the USPS settled on a name and everyone got a postcard that provided the street and house number, one part was signed and returned as official an change of address, the other was for the household records. I could see a court requiring the same consideration be applied to reservations. I also could see the court preventing any disenfranchise of voters until the USPS finished issuing the necessary information.
My aunt is a Native American in Wisconsin who was whisked away to Indian School as a girl. On top of everything, the school changed her name. So to renew her driver’s license she needed for Wisconsin’s voter ID, she needed:
_Birth certificate. Which she didn’t have, so had to track down baptismal records from a church her family never willingly attended.
_Marriage certificate to her first husband
_Divorce decree
_Marriage certificate to my uncle
_Indian school records documenting the name they assigned her, because of course it didn’t match the church papers.
Over $100 in fees and more than one overnight trip. This is the new poll tax.
If the state says that an address that is submitted on the ID is not “correct” they must have the “correct” address on file to check against the one submitted. It seems that the simple solution is for the state to tell the voter what their “Correct” address is and then issue a new ID.