Lawsuit seeking ballot access for reservations reveals broken system at work as Native Americans struggle for voting

Voting on the reservation

The Economist

THE headline of this article by Jordy Yager in The Hill is somewhat overblown, as the issue is rather unlikely to actually decide which party controls the Senate in 2015, but it’s pretty interesting on its own terms: a group of native Americans is suing the state of Montana to force it to establish more widespread voting stations on reservations. Apparently many of the state’s 50,000 native Americans have to drive over 100 miles to vote, since polling stations were established back before they had the right to vote and haven’t been updated much. The video of a meeting between activists for the tribes and Montana’s secretary of state, Linda McCulloch, is even more fascinating. Even though Ms McCulloch is a Democrat who, one would think, stands to benefit from making it easier for native Americans to vote, and even though the national Department of Justice is backing the lawsuit, she begs off from offering even verbal support for the effort, pleading the sort of weird technicality that makes you suspect there’s something else going on here.

more at:

https://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2013/07/native-american-politics