GOP at Pine Ridge: 'We'll be there'

By Bill Harlan, Journal Staff Writer | Monday, November 01, 2004

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Republican Party election observers will be on the job on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation this morning, despite a tribal court order restricting some of their activities.

"We'll be there, regardless," Jason Glodt, executive director of the South Dakota Republican Party, said.

Glodt said Republicans might ask a federal court to strike down the restraining order today, but he emphasized that party officials were also relying on the opinion of U.S. Attorney James McMahon, who called the order illegal.

Oglala Sioux tribal Judge Marina Fast Horse signed the order on Friday. Glodt said it appeared to bar Republican Party workers from poll watching.

Brett Healy, director of Four Directions, the nonprofit group that sought the restraining order, said Fast Horse's ruling barred only one particular Republican employee from poll watching. The rest of the order, Healy said, merely bars Republican workers from videotaping and "stalking" Four Directions employees.

Four Directions is registered as a nonpartisan organization, but Healy is a past executive director of the South Dakota Democratic Party.

McMahon and state Attorney General Larry Long have said that the wording of the order was unclear and could be interpreted as a ban on Republican Party poll watchers.

Healy said, "That was never our intention."

Glodt acknowledged that a Republican worker was videotaping Four Directions employees. He said it was part of an investigation of voter fraud, and he said the party already had turned over evidence to federal prosecutors.

Republican Party poll watcher Ryan Sittmer, a Sioux Falls attorney, said Sunday he had witnessed improper electioneering at Pine Ridge. He said a man wearing a T-shirt supporting Democratic Sen. Tom Daschle urged him to vote for Daschle while standing only a few feet from a church being used as a polling place for absentee voters. Electioneering is prohibited near polling places.

Sittmer also said he had given federal prosecutors the names of people who told him they had been offered money or alcohol in return for voting.

"That's racist crap," Healy said, noting that nothing came of similar charges by Republicans in 2002.

Healy did say his group would go to tribal court this morning to modify the order to exclude Republican worker Ryan Knutson of North Sioux City, who was wrongly named in Four Direction's first filing.

"He is completely innocent," Healy said.

Four Directions' complaint accused Knutson of trespassing in order to videotape Four Directions workers on private property.

Knutson quickly denied he had ever in his entire life visited the Pine Ridge reservation. He said he learned of the restraining order from news reports Saturday morning. "I hate it because it sounds like I'm right in the thick of this garbage, and I have no connection to it," he said Sunday.

Knutson said an Internet search of his name this weekend turned up news stories from Mississippi to California. "It's horrible," he said.

Healy repeated the apology he offered Knutson on Saturday, but Healy also insisted that Four Directions would not withdraw the parts of the restraining order seeking to keep Republican Party employees away from Four Directions offices and employees.

"I don't think the Republican Party, or Democrats for that matter, have an inherent right to stalk nonpartisan workers helping Indians to the polls."

Glodt insisted, "We've had numerous reports of voting problems in Pine Ridge and in Todd County."

Rosebud Indian Reservation is in Todd County.

Contact Bill Harlan at 394-8424 or at bill.harlan@rapidcityjournal.com