Maybe House Democrats Are Coming to North Dakota to Learn How Not to Suppress Native American Votes
Frank White Bull, a Standing Rock Sioux council member, shoes his tribal identification card, complete with physical address, in North Dakota, Oct. 22, 2018. Under a new law, North Dakotans cannot vote without a residential address; Native Americans, who largely rely on post office boxes, are working to overcome what they see as a clear attempt at voter suppression. (Kristina Barker/The New York Times)
According to the press release below, Democrats from a House subcommittee on elections will be holding a field hearing on the Standing Rock Reservation.
The topic is voting.
During the 2018 election cycle Democrats, and various political groups allied with them, tried to put then-Senator Heidi Heitkamp over the top by making wild claims about supposed efforts to suppress the vote in North Dakota’s Native American communities by way of voter ID laws. Only, in the end, there doesn’t appear to have been any voter suppression at all.
If North Dakota’s voter ID laws were designed to suppress Native American voters – spoiler alert, they weren’t – they failed miserably.
Voter turnout in Indian country literally set records.
[mks_pullquote align=”right” width=”300″ size=”24″ bg_color=”#ffffff” txt_color=”#000000″]If North Dakota’s voter ID laws were designed to suppress Native American voters – spoiler alert, they weren’t – they failed miserably. Voter turnout in Indian country literally set records.[/mks_pullquote]
So why, then, the field hearing from the Democrat-led subcommittee?
Partisan politics. Which is self-evident from the release below.
“The Committee on House Administration Elections Subcommittee will hold a field hearing in North Dakota, covering North Dakota and South Dakota, considering several troubling developments surrounding the franchise and access to the franchise in the Dakotas,” it reads. “The field hearing is responsive to concerns raised regarding voter ID laws with disparate impacts, voter suppression, difficulties in election administration, and challenges that are uniquely faced by the Native American community in attempting to vote and voting.”
The witnesses to testify at this hearing, per the release, are a staff member from an organization which has sued the State of North Dakota over voter ID laws and a left-wing community organizer who has also been a candidate for elected office for the North Dakota Democrats.
Also on the panel for the hearing is a representative for Four Directions, a Native American voting rights group which worked closely with Democratic candidates (including Heidi Heitkamp) during the campaign season.
This hearing has been designed to hear only one side of this argument, I’m afraid.
And, again, what the 2018 election cycle proved is that North Dakota’s voter ID laws (which, I’d remind you, were allowed to be enforced by the U.S. Supreme Court) were hardly an impediment to Native Americans voting.
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