Take a moment to remember the last time you voted. Do you remember having to drive 150 miles to the nearest open polling station? Do you remember — after all of that driving — not being able to read the ballot because it was in a different language or having your ID rejected on the spot? Probably not. The same cannot be said for a population that has continuously suffered from systematic racism and blatant disenfranchisement largely in silence: Native Americans. While most Americans are fussing over whom to vote for this election, thousands of Native Americans are just trying to protect their right to vote in the first place.
This isn’t the first time the American political system has failed Native American communities. Besides colonizing an entire continent they had been living on for thousands of years, enslaving them, desecrating sacred lands, and mocking their plights with harmful stereotypes that reinforce socially-acceptable racism, the United States has quietly taken away Native Americans’ right to have a say in the politics that affects their everyday lives. Stuck in a limbo between being considered foreign entities and citizens, Native lands were seized by states, treaties ignored, their sovereignty violated, and their rights infringed. Full citizenship wasn’t granted for them until 1924 with the passage of the Snyder Act. Even when they were considered citizens, they were still actively discriminated against. State bans on Native Americans voting existed until 1962, nearly 100 years after the 15th amendment granted voting rights to Americans regardless of race.
The right to vote may be guaranteed on paper, but the reality for the 5.4 million Native Americans looks quite different. Two centuries of political turmoil have resulted in a population with some of the lowest political activity of any racial or ethnic group. This includes a low voter registration rate (66 percent compared to 74 percent of non-Hispanic white voters) and low turnout rates (an abysmal 47.5 percent compared to roughly 61 percent for non-Hispanic Whites). History plays a big role in this, but contemporary voter suppression tactics used by states have aided in reducing the voice of Native Americans on Election Day.
Traveling to the polls is an inconvenience to many voters. For Native Americans living on reservations, though, traveling is a strong deterrent to casting their ballot. Reservations are often in remote, rural areas, far away from major cities or towns. When Election Day rolls around, thousands of Native Americans are forced to travel great distances to participate. Registered voters in the Goshute Reservation in Utah, for example, must travel 163 miles to their closest polling station. This is a difficult feat, especially considering that Native Americans are much less likely to have access to a car or transportation. Many states with large Native populations do not offer early voting options, meaning that Native Americans must either make the long journey or not vote at all. Because English-speaking public schools were not effectively established on most reservations (especially in Alaska) until the 1970’s, English literacy among the older population — a good portion of the voting population — is low, minimizing the effectiveness of mail-in ballots. Some major language groups — like Navajo and Ute — are available on ballots, but this doesn’t cover the linguistic diversity of millions of Native American voters. Counties in Arizona and Nevada have recently had issues with the language barrier in which ballots were not translated in time for early voters.
Even if there is a polling station nearby, there’s no way to tell if it’ll still be running in the future. Citing necessary budget cuts, Arizona politicians closed 140 polling stations in Maricopa County, which houses the city of Phoenix and is home to five large native reservations. The remaining polling stations were clustered in the central and eastern portions of the county, which have a higher percentage of white voters and higher overall incomes. This effectively disenfranchised thousands of local voters, disproportionately Natives, who had to travel farther to vote and had to wait in line for up to five hours.
One of the most pervasive and frustrating obstacles faced by Natives on the way to the polls are ID laws, which require voters to show a government-issued photo ID before voting. Proponents of these laws argue that they are put in place to reduce voter fraud that “undermines the integrity of the election process.” However, only 31 incidents of voter fraud have been investigated out of more than a billion casted votes since 2000. Voter ID laws disproportionally disenfranchise minority populations, especially Native Americans. National studies have found that minorities are less likely to have identification materials — such as a driver’s license or passport — needed to cast their vote. For many minorities, identification like a driver’s license is unnecessary; many are disproportionately poor (and thus cannot afford their own car), live in urban areas (and thus rely on public transportation) and are more likely to have their licenses suspended (mainly due to outstanding fines that are a heavy burden on the poor).
These factors are amplified even more in Native American communities, which have a median income of just $37,000, compared to a national median income of $53,000. The overall poverty rate in reservations sits at 28 percent compared to a national average of 15.5 percent. Because of rampant poverty, Native Americans are overwhelmingly less likely to own a car and thus less likely to have a driver’s license that can be accepted at the polls. Studies show that one out of three Natives Americans in North Dakota do not have a valid birth certificate, a crucial document needed to obtain other forms of identification. Some precincts, like in Arizona, accept tribal-issued IDs, but the fees associated with obtaining the ID can prove to be a heavy burden on impoverished families. Even if tribal IDs are accepted on paper, in reality many voters find themselves stuck in bureaucratic red tape because these Tribal IDs often do not provide residential information in the same manner that government-issued IDs do, rendering them invalid.
Voter suppression has become easier in recent months, thanks in part to the Supreme Court ruling in Shelby County v. Holder that held that jurisdictions no longer need federal clearance before changing voting practices like closing polling stations, enacting voter restriction laws, and changing language accessibility. This ruling has had a big impact on tribes in South Dakota and Arizona, two states specifically mentioned in the ruling because of their frequent use of gerrymandering and closing polling stations to disrupt voter participation. San Juan County in Utah was recently chastised this year for racial gerrymandering, drawing district lines to group the Native American population, which makes up 52% of the population, into one district. This tactic ensured that Native Americans — the majority population — would be unable to gain political power in the county. Some states, like Arizona, do not allow voters to use PO boxes when registering, citing that voters could abuse the system and vote in districts that they do not actually reside in. This is disproportionately harmful to Native Americans, who make up roughly 5% of the state’s population, since most reservation systems are in rural areas away from postal routes and thus residents must use PO boxes in nearby towns.
As Americans, we take pride in our democratic system and the notion of equality that comes along with it, but it’s hard to retain that pride when faced with the fact that millions of Americans are effectively barred from the polls. It should not be controversial to say that a democracy that actively strips people of their right to be heard is inherently broken.
The Native American population may not be able to sway national elections on their own, but they would be able to sway local elections that affect their day-to-day lives in the same way that the rest of the country is able to do. If they were represented in a fair and equal way, they wouldn’t have to stage protests to counter a $3.8 billion oil pipeline that local politicians in North Dakota are allowing to desecrate sacred lands and taint local reservations’ water supplies. If they were represented in a fair and equal way, they would be better equipped to deal with the rampant poverty, alcoholism, and suicide rates that plague reservation communities due to a lack of funds, opportunities, and oversight.
Put plainly, Native Americans are not being heard; not by council members in local positions, not by representatives in Washington, and not by their fellow Americans across the country. Their issues have been put on the back burner, filed under the “we’ll deal with that later” category of pressing political issues. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders met with tribal leaders during their primary races, but whatever happened during those meetings has failed to translate into any change in the form of meaningful political action or raised awareness. For a nation so prideful of our notions of equality and democracy, we are collectively great at turning a blind eye to the systematic disenfranchisement and disempowerment of our fellow Americans.