Heidi Heitkamp first won election to the senate in 2012 by a mere 3000 or so vote margin. The three native majority counties in ND cast around 5000 votes for Heidi and sent her to Washington. And if the new republicans on the supreme court have their way many of those native voters won’t get to send Heidi back to Washington again.
For most of it’s century and change history North Dakota required neither voter registration nor voter ID. For a rural state of small towns that worked well, especially so given that North Dakotans tend to live into their 80s and beyond, births weren’t recorded ’til late in World War One, and the passenger rail service was so good that many city dwellers never got drivers licenses. Even if you had an ID it might only list your town, as many towns saw no need for such formalities as street names and numbers until 911 systems brought “fire numbers” so a 911 operator on the other side of the county could direct responders. So for decades North Dakotas blissfully carried on with no addresses, registrations, nor IDs, though the state bank and mill came in handy.
But the GOP had a problem with all that democracy, especially when it allowed thousands of native citizens to vote and send their chosen senator to DC. So they passed a voter ID law with no voter registration… What could go wrong? A whole lot, especially with no registration that would give the local election officials time to sort out voters eligibility before election day. No surprise that those 3 native majority counties turned out a quarter less votes for Hillary than they did for Heidi 4 years earlier.
But that was still too many native votes for the GOP bigots, so they passed even tighter voter ID regulations requiring an ID with a street address to vote. Now remember this is a state where addresses are likely to be range, township, section, and quarter rather than number and street, and that gets even more casual in Indian country. So the GOP bigots passed legislation requiring an exact street address on that ID required to vote.
The Native American rights Fund filed this lawsuit and it’s made it’s way to the Supreme Court just in time for the GOP to get some payback for their investment in Kavanaugh. They’re asking the supreme court to take emergency action to stop these new discriminatory voter ID requirements. But Kavanaugh may pay back the GOP senators that confirmed him within days by denying Heidi Heitkamp the native votes to win another term in the senate.
Pretty quick payback for the GOP’s investment…
Sassy Democrat 