In Coordinated Effort, GOP Moves To Disenfranchise Native American Voters in South Dakota

In the latest instance of decades of blatant, racially motivated, voter disenfranchisement in South Dakota, Republican officials at the state and county level have begun the process of limiting Native American access to the ballot. Shannon County, home of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, faces the prospect of no early voting access this fall. Worse still, there remains the very real possibility of no Election Day voting at all in Shannon County.

There is little ambiguity to what has transpired in South Dakota in the last month. According to the 2000 Census, Shannon County is 94.2% Native American. Lying entirely on reservation land, Shannon County is the second poorest county in the United States. In the 2004 and 2008 elections, Shannon County has been the highest Democratic performing county in the country. In 2008, Barack Obama received 88.6% of the vote in Shannon County. Because of the rural nature of the county, it has traditionally seen much higher levels of absentee and early voting than the South Dakota averages.

Because Shannon County is one of two unorganized counties in South Dakota, elections have been administered by neighboring Fall River County. This has been standard procedure for over thirty years. Frustrated and seeing a political opportunity however, Republican officials at the state and county level decided to act. In August, county officials in Fall River County made it clear they would resign if asked to administer the same early voting opportunities in Shannon County that every other county receives. When they were formally asked to do so on September 3, 2010, a number of county officials subsequently resigned, leaving no one to run the election in Shannon County.

The next Thursday, September 9, Republican Secretary of State Chris Nelson met with officials from both Shannon and Fall River County. As reported by the Rapid City Journal Nelson arbitrarily declared that Shannon County had only until the next Monday, September 13th, to resolve the situation. In addition to only giving Shannon County two business days to respond, Nelson repeatedly suggested that there was nothing that the State could do to help. Brazenly, Nelson told those gathered at the meeting, “you all have a huge challenge on your hands.” Nelson, the chief elections officer in the state and a former Republican candidate for Congress, is prepared to sit idly by and watch an entire county be disenfranchised.

As of now, there is no plan in place for how any elections are to take place in Shannon County, South Dakota. Voting rights groups believe the turnout for the 2010 cycle in Shannon County could be as high as 5,000 votes, a sizeable percentage of the state vote in South Dakota. Because many of those votes will be for Democrats, South Dakota Republicans are willing to take on lengthy legal fights to protect those votes, because they know it can’t be resolved before election day.

None of this is new. For the past several years, South Dakota has openly flaunted the 1965 Voting Rights Act, considering fair and equal access to the ballot an unnecessary hassle that the state need not worry about. This has led to numerous lawsuits, all of which have been lost by the state. The problem is that by the time the court resolves the issues, the damage has been done.

Since announcing his candidacy in October of 2009, Ben Nesselhuf, the Democratic candidate for Secretary of State, has campaigned for fair and equal elections in South Dakota. Nesselhuf has demanded that every county in the state, have the resources and facilities they need to have early voting and smoothly run elections. On September 8, Nesselhuf was quoted in Indian Country Today saying that he considers the way the state has run previous elections as “systematic disenfranchisement.”

Predictably, Nesselhuf’s opponent has said nothing on this issue, and has run a RNC-directed campaign based entirely around fear-mongering about voter fraud. For Republicans in South Dakota, every time a Native American votes, it’s “fraud.”

The only way to stop this cycle of disenfranchisement is to elect a Secretary of State that is committed to ensuring that every citizen who has the right to vote and the desire to vote will have the opportunity to vote. Ben Nesselhuf is the only candidate in the race committed to this goal. Ben and his team have run a very aggressive campaign but the South Dakota GOP has made clear their intention to do whatever it takes to hold on to this seat and control future elections. Ben can win, but not without your help. Learn more about Ben and how you can help his campaign at www.benforsouthdakota.com.