Federal judge expands tribal ID options for North Dakota

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press


James Macpherson, Associated Press
Updated 8:51 pm, Wednesday, April 4, 2018

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — A federal judge has agreed to expand the proof of identity Native Americans can use for North Dakota elections, a decision reversing his temporary order that allowed voters without a state-approved ID to cast ballots by signing a legal document.

U.S. District Judge Daniel Hovland's ruling issued Tuesday adds other tribal documents to the state's list of valid forms of ID. It also eliminates a requirement that those documents include residential street addresses, which sometimes aren't assigned on American Indian reservations.

"No eligible voter, regardless of their station in life, should be denied the opportunity to vote," Hovland wrote in his 17-page ruling.

Several members of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa in North Dakota challenged the state's voter identification laws, saying they were a form of voter suppression.

Read more: https://www.chron.com/news/us/article/Federal-judge-expands-tribal-ID-options-for-North-12806137.php

[Bayard]

1. Good for this judge

Voter suppression is right. North Dakota is a red state, and I bet most Natives would vote blue.

Cruelly ironic that people can't vote in a country that was stolen from them.

[Nitram]

2. I've learned quite a bit about the complicated relationship among reservations, states, and the

federal government from reading books like "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee", watching the series "Longmire", and more recently, the movie "Wind River." What I'm left with is a sense of the unspeakably tragic situation Native American communities have been born into following a legacy of political decisions foisted on them that have been based on greed, racism, and even terribly mistaken good intentions.

[turbinetree]

3. Russell Means ....................1989