South Dakota Voter-Suppression Scandal Escalates


This article appeared on the Huffington Post in 2013. For more on topics like this, see my book, American Apartheid: The Native American Struggle....

South Dakota has devised an ingenious new way to curb minority voting. For decades, suppression here has involved same-old-same-old activities: last-minute location changes for Indian-reservation polling places, asking Native voters for ID that isn’t required, confronting them in precinct parking lots, and tailing them from the polls and recording their license-plate numbers. The state and jurisdictions within it have fought and lost some 20 Native voting-rights lawsuits. Two South Dakota counties were subject to U.S. Department of Justice oversight until June of this year.

That’s when the Supreme Court struck down a portion of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, saying, “Today, our Nation has changed.” Yes, it has. The VRA decision provided the opening for those who wish to suppress voting by minorities, the poor and other marginalized citizens. Since SCOTUS’s decision, gerrymandering and ID restrictions have swept the country.

South Dakota’s secretary of state and top elections official Jason Gant is ahead of the pack. He will ask the federal Election Assistance Commission if it’s okay to use Help America Vote Act funds to pay for early-voting polling places on three Indian reservations. Such reservation facilities, for which the state has already used HAVA funds, cost about $15,000 per election. If the new ones are approved, the money will come from the $9 million in HAVA appropriations that the state has in interest-bearing accounts earning hundreds of thousands per year.

At this point, dear reader, you are probably wondering why asking a federal agency for permission to do this is so very clever. It’s because the EAC no longer has any staff whatsoever tasked to respond to queries, according to EAC spokesperson Bryan Whitener. A look at the commission’s website reveals a several-year backlog of unanswered questions.

Better yet, Gant apparently knows that a letter to the EAC would disappear into the void. He is an officer of the National Association of Secretaries of State, which voted in 2011 to support disbanding the EAC This is according to reporting by the national American Indian news source, Indian Country Today Media Network, the AP and several South Dakota media outlets have reported.

As the scandal accelerates, with media coverage in South Dakota and around the country, Gant insists that the moribund EAC is the arbiter of the Native early-voting question. “The EAC can say either yes or no, or they may issue no response...I will not use HAVA funds unless it is clearly defined that I can do so,” Gant wrote in an August 2 statement.

Four Directions consultant Bret Healy called Gant’s reliance on the EAC “troubling,” given the secretary of state’s involvement with its demise. Healy said that any communication sent to the commission was a “dead letter.” 

Linda Lea Viken, a Rapid City attorney and elections board member since 1999, said she was startled by the turn of events, especially since board members had pressed Gant during the July 31 meeting about when the EAC might reply and he gave no indication that the answer was, in all likelihood, never. 

In an email to Secretary Gant, Viken asked, “May I ask, when did you first become aware that the EAC is not fully staffed and hasn't issued a decision for several years?” 

At another point, Viken queried Gant, “In light of the information the board has now [received] about the futility of such a request, what do you propose? We certainly don’t want these folks to be in limbo for years. They have been seeking this decision for a long time, and we should not be dismissive of their request.” 

County elections official and elections board member Patty McGee saw things differently. McGee, who has served on the EAC’s federal Standards Board, told the state panel, “We’ve given them [American Indians] several opportunities to vote.” Later, she explained to this reporter, “A person has to make an effort.”

Voting-rights group Four Directions made the satellite-voting request on behalf of three South Dakota Sioux tribes during the July 31 meeting of the state’s Board of Elections. With the polling places, tribal members would cast ballots closer to home during South Dakota’s 46-day early-voting period. Shown at top and below are portions of a 50-plus-mile round trip some Oglalas currently make to early-vote in an off-reservation county courthouse—if they can find the transport or gas money. Other tribal members may travel 100 miles or more to cast ballots early.

“Right now, most Indians in South Dakota get one day to vote, Election Day, when precincts are set up on reservations; meanwhile, other voters have several weeks,” said civil-rights leader OJ Semans, a Rosebud Sioux who co-directs Four Directions. “That’s not equal access.” 

Healy noted that having some—but not all—ways to vote does not constitute equality. He also referred to Natives as a “protected class” of voters, as defined by the permanent sections of the Voting Rights Act, which were not struck down and remain in effect. Because Native Americans have historically been subject to official discrimination and had less opportunity to participate in the electoral process, any abridgement of their rights draws special scrutiny.

Separately, at the request of U.S. Senator Tim Johnson (D–S.D.), the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service has analyzed relevant regulations and opined that South Dakota’s HAVA funds can be used for early voting, also called in-person absentee voting. But Gant is sticking to his guns: “We have to see what the EAC response is and proceed with the next step at that time.”

According to Viken, the elections board acts as an appeals panel for HAVA issues within South Dakota. She wants the board to revisit the reservation early-voting issue. Said Viken, “It’s always good for us to be refreshed on our responsibilities under the law.”

Text and photographs c. Stephanie Woodard. This article was written with support from the George Polk Center for Investigative Reporting. 


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