N.D. law could keep rural Native Americans from voting

A North Dakota law requiring voters to present an ID at the polls may keep many of the state’s rural Native Americans from voting, Jeremy Hobson of Boston's wide-ranging WBUR-FM reports.

The problem is that state- or tribal-issued IDs must have a street address, but a street address is not required for the tens of thousands of Native Americans living on one of the state’s five reservations. House numbers are rare so many reservation residents simply use post office boxes for mail.

Ironically, a law designed to prevent voter fraud may instead create it, according to Danielle Ta'sheena Finn, external affairs director for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe: “You have people now making up their own addresses, because they do not feel like they should go to the sheriff, who is also our 911 coordinator and the only person in Sioux County who can issue an address. So they're making up their own addresses right now, which is voter fraud. They just created a problem, basically."

The Supreme Court declined this month to overturn the law, so reservation residents and others without IDs will need to obtain them before voting in the midterm elections, Hobson reports. That has implications for Democratic U.S. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, for whom Native Americans were an important voting bloc in her 2012 election. She is trailing in polls.