North Dakotans Can Understand the Overreaction to Georgia’s New Voting Laws
MINOT, N.D. — During the 2018 election cycle, when it became clear that then-U.S. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp was on the political ropes, her campaign decided it needed a talking point to drive desired voting demographics to the polls.
Thus was born the claim that North Dakota’s voter ID laws were crafted to disenfranchise Native American voters, generally, and to block Heitkamp’s re-election, specifically.
This turned out to be bunk.
The courts allowed our state’s perfectly legal laws to be enforced during the 2018 election and — surprise! — we saw a record-setting turnout. In the state’s tribal communities, in particular.
If North Dakota’s Republican lawmakers were out to suppress voters (they weren’t), they did a terrible job of it. The complaints from Heitkamp and her various allies in the world of professional activism and the news media weren’t based on concerns over voting. It was politics.
Georgians are getting a similar taste of politically-motivated histrionics about voting laws.
