Indians still face obstacles in voting

By Mary Clare Jalonick, Associated Press Writer | Monday, March 27, 2006

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LAKE ANDES — When Charon Asetoyer went to vote a few years ago, she was met with unfriendly words and an offensive gesture. A white man, apparently unhappy with the idea of an American Indian walking into the polls, asked her in vulgar terms what she was doing there.

She told him she was there because she had a right to vote and went back to her car to wait for him to leave. Only after he sped away did she walk inside.

Discrimination against Indians is commonplace here, she said. And nowhere is that more evident than in the polling booth.

Asetoyer, an Indian who lives on the Yankton Sioux Indian Reservation in the quiet flatlands of southeastern South Dakota, compares her home to the South in the 1960s.

“It’s outright racism,” she said.

Many on this reservation say that kind of behavior is normal in Charles Mix County, a poor, rural section of South Dakota farm country where Indians constitute about one-third of the population. Asetoyer, a quietly determined activist who moved here from California years ago, calls it a land-based struggle, where many of the conflicts are “border issues.”

The problem is not limited to South Dakota. As Congress considers reauthorize parts of the Voting Rights Act, many Indians say they aren’t satisfied with federal and state protections of their voting rights. Although the landmark law has brought them a long way from the day when some state governments required they be “civilized” to cast ballots, they say they still suffer from intimidation, restrictive voting requirements and long distances to polling places.

“There’s no question that there still is some subtle discouragement,” said former Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., a member of Colorado’s Northern Cheyenne Tribe. “We’ve come a long way but we have a long way to go.”

A year away from reauthorization — parts of the Voting Rights Act are set to expire in 2007 — members of Congress are keeping quiet about possible changes to the law. But tribes expect changes, and they worry that could reverse a growing electoral clout among many Indian nations in their states.

Recent successes for Indian voters include the 2002 Senate election in South Dakota, when Sen. Tim Johnson, a Democrat, barely won re-election with 524 votes and a huge increase in turnout on reservations. In Washington state, a surge of Indian votes had a major effect on Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell’s narrow win in 2000. In Arizona, reservations helped seat Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano in 2002.

Despite these achievements, tribes point to restrictive voting laws throughout the country. South Dakota’s new voter identification law — passed after Johnson’s election — requires residents to show photo identification at the polls, a problem for many on the reservations who don’t have IDs. The law permits those without identification to sign an affidavit, but opponents argue there is confusion about what is allowed. The American Civil Liberties Union has challenged other voter-identification statutes seen as restrictive to Indians in Albuquerque, N.M. and Minnesota.

“The tribes are still very concerned about the targeted efforts to disenfranchise their vote,” Jacqueline Johnson, executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, said. “We are having to change a mindset that exists.”

Others imply the problems are exaggerated. Chris Nelson, South Dakota’s Republican secretary of state, focuses on the positive — a huge differential in Indian turnout between 2000 and 2004, after two major Senate races — and said he has seen little evidence of voter intimidation.

Nelson said he is willing to support removing some federal protections on South Dakota’s reservations. Shannon and Todd Counties — historically home to the state’s largest population of Indians — are included in Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, meaning that any major changes in election policy there must be federally approved.

Nelson said that thousands of local decisions have gone through the department without being rejected. The state is working to ensure that the Indian vote is protected, he said, lessening the need for federal help.

“Has the preclearance requirement done anything to improve the ability of Indians to vote in those counties? The answer is no,” Nelson said.

He said the increase in turnout has nothing to do with federal law but with interest in particular elections and strong get-out-the-vote efforts in the state.

Former Sen. Campbell disagrees.

“If those federal protections weren’t there, Indians wouldn’t have a chance at voting,” he said. “The law probably ought to go farther.”

Indians in Washington and on the reservations are reluctant to say what exactly they would like to change about the Voting Rights Act, because there isn’t much consensus yet. Some suggest adding counties with increased federal protections, instead of removing them, and expanding a section of the law that allows bilingual assistance in polling stations.

Others suggest a larger number of polling places, more Indian poll watchers and more general oversight on election day.

One issue they all agree on is that current protections need to be retained.

“There are going to be some changes, and we really need to watch what those changes are,” Robert Cournoyer, chairman of the Yankton Sioux tribe, said.

Sen. Johnson said that Congress will have to maintain some protections to keep Indians’ trust in the system — and voting levels high.

“There’s still a lack of trust and confidence between Native Americans and state institutions, and keeping some federal oversight is something that Native Americans want to have,” he said. “Its presence contributes to a higher confidence level.”

If current trends continue, say some on the Yankton reservation, Indians could start to have more of a say about what happens in Washington. As their numbers have increased at the ballot box, Indian activists say the age-old perception that votes don’t count on reservations is slowly dissipating.

Oliver Semans, an Indian who has organized several South Dakota get-out-the-vote campaigns, said he has tried to strengthen participation by equating low voting levels with high poverty levels. This has worked to some extent, he said.

“You give us 20 years, we’ll have our country back,” Semans said.

Indians in Charles Mix County appear slightly less confident as tensions have escalated in recent years.

The county received national attention during the 2004 election, when the state ousted Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle in favor of Republican Sen. John Thune. The night before the election, Daschle’s campaign asked for a temporary restraining order against Republican poll watchers who were allegedly intimidating Indian voters. A judge granted the order for Charles Mix County, a ruling Republicans charge was purely political.

This year, a group of people in the county are quietly circulating a petition to divide the county, separating the reservation from the whiter areas.

Petition sponsors have not publicly identified themselves, but Asetoyer and others speculate it is intended to keep Indians off the county commission.

Sharon Drapeau, a native of the Yankton reservation who narrowly lost a race for the county commission, said it may get worse for Indian country before it gets better as tensions rise.

“You have to get that scab off and let it bleed to clean it,” she said.

Some provisions of Voting Rights Act expire in 2007

Most aspects of the Voting Rights Act, first passed by Congress in 1965, will never expire. But some key provisions will expire in 2007 without congressional action:

- Clearance: This section of the law, commonly known as Section 5, requires local officials in nine states to get any changes to voting practices or procedures cleared beforehand by federal officials to ensure that local officials do not try to discriminate against minorities. Those nine states are Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Virginia and Texas. Parts of seven other states are affected — California, Florida, Michigan, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina and South Dakota.

- Language requirements: Requires that large communities of people who speak limited English must have access to ballots in their native language. Under the requirement, known as Section 203, local jurisdictions must provide bilingual ballots and election materials if more than 5 percent of the voting age population or at least 10,000 citizens fall into a certain language minority group. The illiteracy rate of the minority group must also be higher than the national average. Only four minority groups are covered: American Indians, Asian Americans, Alaskan natives and Hispanics.

- Election monitoring: Allows the attorney general to assign federal election examiners and poll watchers to certain areas.