The voting laws had eliminated same-day registration, banned paid third-party ballot collection and made it harder to vote with a student ID.
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This article is part of our Midterms 2022 Daily Briefing
Many voters in Montana, especially Native Americans living on rural reservations, rely on third-party ballot collection to return their absentee ballots.
A recent court ruling delivered a victory for Native Americans in Montana who had challenged new voting restrictions.
But the legal fight may not be over, and with the midterms a month away, some tribes and their supporters are scrambling to pull together the get-out-the-vote efforts allowed under the ruling.
“My feeling is we’re still going to be jumping through hoops up until Election Day to try to get people voting,” said Dawn Gray, a lawyer for the Blackfeet Nation, which is working to arrange transportation to far-flung election offices and to deliver registration forms for tribal members.
Ms. Gray spoke on Friday, a week after a state court ruled in Western Native Voice v. Jacobsen that three restrictive voting laws passed by the state’s Republican-led legislature violated the Montana Constitution. One had eliminated same-day voter registration, one had banned paid third-party ballot collection, and one had required Montanans voting with student ID to provide additional identification not required of people voting with, for example, a driver’s license.
Many Native Americans depend on ballot collection because they have limited access to mail and transportation. Groups like Western Native Voice — a nonprofit that promotes Native American political participation — often pay workers to collect completed absentee ballots from eligible voters.
Others vote in person but may rely on same-day registration because they cannot afford to travel twice. A voter in Heart Butte, on the Blackfeet reservation, must drive more than 50 miles one-way to get to their county seat. A member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes living in Dixon, on the Flathead Reservation, has to drive nearly 60 miles to their county seat.
In a nearly 200-page opinion, Judge Michael G. Moses of Montana’s 13th Judicial District Court found that the ballot collection ban violated Native American voters’ rights, the ID law violated young voters’ rights, and the same-day registration ban violated both groups’ rights.
In addition to Western Native Voice, other advocacy groups were plaintiffs in the lawsuit along with the Montana Democratic Party, four tribes and a disabled voter who anticipated relying on ballot collection. (The tribes and Western Native Voice, which is nonpartisan, sued separately from the Democrats. But because they challenged the same laws on similar bases, the cases were consolidated, along with a lawsuit on behalf of young voters.)
The state had argued that the laws were needed to protect election security and voter confidence, which Judge Moses rejected, writing that it had not “provided any evidence of voter fraud in Montana.” He found not only that the laws had a discriminatory effect but that, in the case of the same-day registration ban, the discrimination appeared intentional.
“The evidence indicates that the legislature enacted H.B. 176 to reduce voting by young people for perceived political benefit and that the legislature was well aware that H.B. 176 would have a disproportionate negative impact on Native American voters and young voters,” wrote Judge Moses, who was first appointed by former Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat.
That finding is notable because the plaintiffs had not formally made accusations of discriminatory intent, said Jacqueline de León, a lawyer at the Native American Rights Fund who represented Western Native Voice and the tribes.
Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen plans to appeal to the Montana Supreme Court, a spokesman, Richie Melby, said on Thursday.
For now, the restrictions are not in effect, and the appeals process is likely to take far more than a month. But the state could request an emergency stay to reinstate the laws for the Nov. 8 election. Mr. Melby did not respond when asked if it would seek that.
It was unlikely that the Montana Supreme Court would grant an emergency stay if asked, according to Alex Rate, the legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Montana, which also represented the tribes. The court previously upheld a preliminary injunction against the laws, and with so few weeks until the election, “there’s a thumb on the scale for maintaining continuity,” Mr. Rate said. “Election administrators need some certainty here.”
But unlikely is not impossible. Even now, some confusion and miscommunications have been reported. Ms. Gray said that, at a meeting on Thursday with tribal officials, a worker from the Glacier County clerk’s office had appeared unaware of the ruling and said same-day voter registration would not be available. The county clerk, Mandi Bird Kennerly, told The New York Times on Friday that this was not true and that same-day registration would be available.
The effects of Judge Moses’s ruling have begun to play out.
In past elections, Western Native Voice drove hundreds of miles back and forth between reservations and county seats, delivering ballots for people who could not make the drive themselves because of distance or illness. If the ballot collection ban were in effect, many of those people would be unable to vote.
On Friday, Keaton Sunchild, the political director for Western Native Voice, confirmed that the group would collect ballots on every reservation in Montana.
Source: nytimes.com
