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Native Vote 2004 Election Project Project

Description

The Native Vote Election Protection Project (NV-EPP) was the legal component of the non-partisan Native Vote 2004 election project. It was a joint effort between the National Congress of American Indians and the DC Native American Bar Association with the assistance of the Native American Rights Fund.

GOALS
The primary goals of the NV-EPP were to ensure: that each state’s voting rules were fair before the day of the election; that on Election Day every Native voter who was eligible to vote was able to cast their vote and have their vote counted; and, to serve as the voters' advocates on Election Day.

PROGRAM STRUCTURE
NV-EPP was fully engaged and present in eleven (11) states: Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Washington, and Wisconsin. In addition, we had a small presence or coordinating role in Idaho, Oregon, and South Dakota. Altogether we estimate 400-500 volunteers participated in the NV-EPP.

Each state had a State Coordinator who usually appointed a Local Lead for each Native community within the state. The NV-EPP State Coordinators met with the state election officials before the election to help resolve ambiguous voting rules (such as whether or not Tribal IDs were acceptable forms of ID for voting purposes), and recruited hundreds of volunteers to sit inside the polling precincts on election day to provide voter assistance (“poll watching/monitoring”).

While monitoring the polling precincts on Election Day, NV-EPP poll watchers assisted thousands of Native and non-Native voters. Monitors kept track of problems or “incidents” witnessed on NVEPP incident sheets (see APPENDICES), monitored the number of voters, and noted what was working and what was not working for Native communities.

EMPOWERMENT OF VOTERS
One of the primary goals of the NV-EPP program was to empower Native voters with knowledge about the electoral process and their voting rights. For example, Minnesota recorded very few Election Day incidents, largely because voters were so prepared they asserted their own rights and often did not need assistance. Minnesota voters were observed correcting election officials about forms of ID which are acceptable for voting, about absentee ballot rules, and other rules that helped ensure eligible voters were able to vote on Election Day. Minnesota was a shining example of how smoothly Election Day can be, when the community is informed and knows their rights.

INCIDENTS OBSERVED
Registration Issues. Of the over 300 official “incidents” recorded on Election Day by the NV-EPP poll watchers (with hundreds more unrecorded) nearly 60% dealt solely with basic voter

Registration issues.1 Often the voter could not find their correct precinct, thought they had registered to vote but did not appear on the rolls, or had moved since last registering. Not surprisingly, the two states with election-day voter registration, Wisconsin and Minnesota, experienced almost no Registration incidents.

Recommendation: Each Tribe should carefully consider efforts to pass election-day voter registration legislation in their state. For, example, on the Fond du Lac reservation in Minnesota, over 1/3 of Native voters who voted registered to vote on Election Day.

Absentee Ballots. Next to Registration issues, absentee ballot issues were the second most prevalent problem experienced by Native voters. In many reported incidents, voters often requested an absentee ballot but never received it, and then experienced trouble being allowed to vote in person on Election Day. In some states, such as Alaska, election officials placed insufficient postage on the absentee ballots. Over 65% of calls on Election Day from Alaskan voters to the Election Protection hotline were complaints regarding absentee ballots that were never received. In other reported incidents, voters who did not recall ever requesting an absentee ballot, but who were marked as such on the voter rolls, experienced trouble in being allowed to vote on Election Day. In particular, this was a problem for native voters in New Mexico. This raises concerns about third parties submitting absentee ballot requests without a voter’s permission.

Recommendation: Tribes should work with the states to ensure that there is an emergency absentee voting system in place to address these problems. Alaska allows voters to fax in their absentee votes. South Dakota allows ind ividuals who have requested an absentee ballot to vote regularly on Election Day, overriding their absentee ballot, and then throwsout their absentee ballot if it shows up.

Voter Suppression. Allegations of voter intimidation and fraud garnered the most attention and there were some very public occurrences during the November elections. For example, during early voting in South Dakota, Senator Daschle filed a lawsuit against the Thune campaign based on reports that Thune’s non-Indian volunteers were following cars of Indian voters and writing down their license plate numbers. In Red Lake, Minnesota, Tribal Police were forced to eject a partisan poll-watcher based on his on-going intimidation of poll workers, poll watchers and voters, disrupting the voting process at the polling precinct.

However, while dramatic and upsetting, intentional voter intimidation incidents only made up a small percentage of overall incidents reported. The more prevalent suppression incidents were the smaller cultural or cross-community misunderstandings present in the many Native precincts that did not have Native election judges or poll workers.

In addition, many of the non-local partisan poll-watchers created intimidation problems by their mere presence. However, it was sometimes difficult for our local NV-EPP non-partisan volunteers to monitor partisan activity as many states have more restrictive rules on non-partisan poll watchers (often inadvertently forcing many local non-partisan volunteers to choose a political party for Election Day.)1 We estimate that this percentage is actually much higher, as voters with incorrect information regarding their polling place were so frequent that many poll-monitors did not record the encounter as an incident.

Recommendation: Tribes should work aggressively to recruit Native volunteers from their communities, on and off the Reservations, to serve as election judges and poll workers in local, state and national elections. As part of their Get Out the Vote efforts, Tribes should encourage tribal members to volunteer as non-partisan poll monitors as well. States need to pass rules which ensure non-partisan poll watchers are not subject to more restrictive requirements than partisan poll watchers.

Discriminatory Election Laws. In addition to Election Day problems, several states still have a number of restrictive rules in place and laws which disproportionately affect our Native communities. For example, until NV-EPP helped file suit, the Minnesota Secretary of State was attempting to enforce discriminatory Tribal ID rules. In addition, Minnesota still has a rule on the books allowing towns of under 500 to open polls at 10:00am instead of 7:00am. This disproportionately affected many of our native communities in Minnesota as many Native communities have fewer than 500 residents.

Recommendation: Tribes should work with state election officials to ensure that Tribal IDs are an accepted form of identification for voting on Election Day. Tribes and Native communities should ensure that Election Protection projects exit in their communities.

SUMMARY
In general voters, volunteers, and tribal leaders all seem to believe the NV-EPP effort was helpful for their communities and voters. Next steps include following up with changes that need to be made in state election laws, and ensuring that the infrastructure we have put in place is still available for the next election cycle.

Category: Legal, Civic Participation, Civil Rights, Legal, Native American

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