Big news for Native Americans in North Dakota: The state agreed to a settlement that ensures their right to vote even if they don't have an ID showing a residential address. nytimes.com/2020/02/13/us/…
This is a very big deal, and a long time coming. The Repub-controlled North Dakota Legislature first passed the voter ID law shortly after Heidi Heitkamp, a Dem, won a close Senate race in 2012 with strong support from Native Americans. Legal battles have continued ever since. 2/
I wrote about the law in 2018, when a court lifted an injunction and let it take effect less than 2 months before the midterms, sending North Dakota's tribes scrambling. The problem was — is — that many reservations don't use traditional addresses. 3/ nytimes.com/2018/10/30/us/…
In the settlement announced today, North Dakota's sec of state agreed to a legally binding consent decree. His office will be required to ensure Native Americans can vote even if they don't have ID showing residential address or don't know their address 4/ nytimes.com/2020/02/13/us/…
For this year's elections, people without the requisite ID will be able to mark their home on a map. Then the burden will be on the state — not the voter — to verify the address based on that info and make sure their ballot is counted. 5/ nytimes.com/2020/02/13/us/…
The state will then have to notify the voter and the voter's tribe of the official address, which the tribe can use to issue ID for future elections. The "mark your home on a map" option basically formalizes an emergency, last-minute method tribes used in 2018. 6/
North Dakota also agreed to distribute free IDs on reservations before each election, and to "work in good faith" to secure funding to reimburse the tribes up to $5,000 apiece for administrative costs they incur in issuing addresses and IDs. 7/
As I wrote in 2018, the tribes did an impressive job getting members IDs in a very short amount of time. But it was expensive in both money and admin resources. One tribe printed so many IDs that the machine overheated and started melting the cards. 8/ nytimes.com/2018/10/30/us/…
The settlement is “a victory for Indian Country,” @ojsemans of @4directionsvote told me today. "We let the state of North Dakota keep some face. But all in all, what we said from the very beginning was right." nytimes.com/2020/02/13/us/…
