SCOTUS just upheld voter ID law in North Dakota that could disenfranchise thousands of Native voters & cost Heidi Heitkamp her Senate seat. "The risk of disenfranchisement is large" RBG writes in dissent https://t.co/jZVB955OGa
— Ari Berman (@AriBerman) October 9, 2018
… North Dakota’s 2017 voter law ID was challenged by Native residents who alleged that the law disproportionately blocked Native Americans from voting. In April, a federal district court judge blocked large portions of the law as discriminatory against Native voters. “The State has acknowledged that Native American communities often lack residential street addresses,” Judge Daniel Hovland wrote. “Nevertheless, under current State law an individual who does not have a ‘current residential street address’ will never be qualified to vote.” According to the website of the Native American Rights Fund, which represents the plaintiffs, many native residents lack residential street addresses because “the U.S. postal service does not provide residential delivery in these rural Indian communities.”As a result, tribal IDs use P.O. boxes, which are not sufficient under North Dakota’s new law—a specification that seems designed to disenfranchise native voters. Hovland’s ruling was in place during the primaries this spring.
But in September, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals allowed the law to go into effect. The Supreme Court upheld that ruling Tuesday. In her dissent, Ginsburg argued that the Supreme Court’s order was at odds with one of the top court’s most frequently invoked doctrines on election law: not to change the rules right before an election. By allowing a different set of ID rules in the general election from in the primary, Ginsburg warned, the court was risking widespread confusion and disenfranchisement…
Ginsburg noted that according to the factual record of the case, about 20 percent of voters likely to try to cast a ballot in the midterms will lack the required identification. Another “approximately18,000 North Dakota residents also lack supplemental documentation sufficient to permit them to vote without a qualifying ID,” she noted.
But very few among that 20% will be elderly white people who’ve lived at the same address for decades, so the chances of losing Repub votes is much smaller!
Per the Washington Post:
RUTLAND, N.D. — … One day after the [Kavanaugh] vote, she was back among North Dakotans, wearing a dark sweatshirt against the chill as she led a group of about 100 supporters during the parade for Uffda Day, a Scandinavian heritage festival held each year in this town of fewer than 200 residents.
“I knew this was going to be a difficult vote,” she said in an interview. “I just hope I have the chance to explain why.”…
Proud to Be A Democrat: Concerning Heidi HeitkampPost + Comments (20)