Montana Dems Won’t Endorse Native Voting Suit
Published in Indian Country Today in 2013. For more on topics like this, see my book, American Apartheid: The Native American Struggle....
The Montana Democratic
Party appears to have rebuffed a March 6, 2013, request from Mark Wandering
Medicine, Northern Cheyenne, to endorse the Native side in the voting-rights
lawsuit in which he is the lead plaintiff, Wandering Medicine v. McCulloch.
The case is now before the Ninth
Circuit Court of Appeals. Linda McCulloch, a Democrat who is Montana’s
secretary of state and head voting official, is the lead defendant. Wandering Medicine (shown at left in photo) and fellow plaintiff Hugh Club Foot are seen discussing the lawsuit in Birney, Montana, on the Northern Cheyenne reservation.
The other 13 defendants
are Republican and Democratic county officials who refused to set up
on-reservation early-voting offices ahead of the 2012 election, citing lack of
time and money. They ended up in court, facing 16 plaintiffs from Montana
tribes seeking the polling stations. The defendants’ lead lawyer is South
Dakota Republican Party secretary, Sara Frankenstein. The plaintiffs’ attorney
is Steven Sandven, of Sioux Falls. Those backing the Native
side include the U.S. Department of Justice, which filed a friend-of-the-court
brief.
Montana Democratic Party spokesperson
Chris Saeger said its focus would remain on grassroots organizing. “That’s
where our strength lies. Montana Democrats will continue to improve access to
voting on reservations by registering people to vote and by helping them get to
the polls.”
In his letter to the
party, Wandering Medicine, a wounded Vietnam War veteran, said the
question was whether the Montana party’s platform had any teeth. The document
expresses broad sympathy for Native issues—including voting rights, as is
typical of the Democratic Party’s long-term and well-known backing for equal enfranchisement.
“But does the Montana party
have any real intent to support Native people?” asked Wandering Medicine in an
interview with ICTMN. “Does their
platform apply to the current situation in Montana? In broad terms, if the statements
don’t apply here and now, it’s not fair to say they’re speaking in the best
interests of Native Americans.”
Saeger delineated the party’s efforts. “To get out
the vote in American Indian communities in the last election cycle,
we recruited dozens of volunteers, provided countless rides to the polls,
launched radio ads, registered thousands of voters on reservations, spent
thousands of dollars and sent thousands of mail pieces. We will continue
that commitment in 2014.”
O.J. Semans, Rosebud Sioux and co-director with wife Barb Semans of voting-rights group Four Directions, said that wasn’t the point. “No matter
how much they’re on the ground, one day for Native people to vote in Montana, Election Day, does not equal the 20 days, Election Day plus early voting, that
everyone else gets.” (The Semans couple is shown left with Fort Belknap tribal leader Donovan Archambault.)
Traveling to non-Native county seats to early-vote
is not an option, said Wandering Medicine, whose journey to his county seat is
180-plus miles round trip. “My people can’t make it. Many of us don’t have cars
or don’t have gas money. In my village, we don’t have a gas station; we can’t vote
by mail instead, because we don’t have a post office. This lawsuit comes down
to one thing: Can we participate in the things we’re entitled to?”
Said Semans: “In 2013, Native American Indians are
fighting voting-rights battles that African Americans fought in the Sixties.
This is as important to tribes now as it was to them in 1965.”
Montana Democratic Party head Jim Elliott did not respond to ICTMN’s requests for an interview. McCulloch’s office has refused
to comment because the lawsuit was ongoing. An official of the Montana Indian
Democrats Council, Stacey Otterstrom, Little Shell Tribe, said the group
discusses voting-rights issues “all the time.” However, said Otterstrom, the council
had not discussed Wandering Medicine’s request, and only party spokesperson Saeger
could comment on it.
Text c. Stephanie Woodard. Photo at top c. Stephanie Woodard; photo above c. William Campbell.