Voting Rights Call for Action: Pierre Should Guarantee Shannon County Balloting

I take voting for granted. I assume that I can walk into the Lake County Courthouse during business hours any time between now and Election Day and and fill in my ballot.

I guess I'm lucky I'm not living in Shannon County... and part of a key Democratic-leaning constituency that the state's Republicans would love to see miss the vote:

Native Americans have long faced police harassment, illegal voter challenges, and election-day chaos on the way to the polls in South Dakota. Those problems may soon be over on the Oglala Sioux Tribe's Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. That's because South Dakota has no clear plan to provide any voting at all in this fall's election.

The imminent disenfranchisement of thousands of voters follows resignations of officials in the off-reservation county that handled outsourced, non-tribal government services, including elections, for Pine Ridge's Shannon County. However, the crisis may also have arisen because Oglalas, members of the nation's most marginalized ethnic group, have emerged as deciders in South Dakota elections -- as have tribes in other areas since 2000, when Native support helped send Washington state's Maria Cantwell to the U.S. Senate. With Shannon County voters turning in the nation's highest Democratic performance in recent presidential elections, sidelining them is a game-changer in close contests, including this year's race for the state's sole Congressional seat, held by Democrat Stephanie Herseth Sandlin.

South Dakota's head election official, Secretary of State Chris Nelson, has taken a hands-off approach to the problem, saying the counties involved should solve it. If they don't, said Attorney General Marty Jackley, who's up for re-election, "the state will weigh the need to take action" [Stephanie Woodard, "South Dakota Election Scandal: Are Oglala Sioux Voting Rights Doomed?" Huffington Post, 2010.09.20].

I might be able to appreciate Secretary Nelson's fatherly, "you kids settle your own differences" approach, if we weren't talking about a fundamental Constitutional (federal and state) right. Shannon and Fall River counties may need to untwist their own knickers, but the state has an obligation to ensure every eligible South Dakotan has the same opportunity to vote. Our right to vote should not hinge on a bureaucratic spat or any other vagary of local government.

I can vote every business day at my courthouse. Every citizen of Shannon County and every other jurisdiction in South Dakota should have the same opportunity. Secretary Nelson should deputize a couple folks in his office, give them a van loaded with ballots and a couple strong metal boxes, and send them with a Highway Patrol escort to set up an absentee polling place in Pine Ridge.
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Bonus: Chat with Secretary Nelson live online this morning at 9 a.m. Mountain (that's 40 minutes from the time of this posting!) on the Rapid City Journal's live web chat, hosted by Kevin Woster.

Pine Ridge: Scarier Than Taliban Ambush

Dr. Newquist is right: Aaron Huey's interview and photos of the Pine Ridge Reservation in the New York Times should be required reading for all South Dakotans. A large portion of our state is the Third World. Guns, gangs... and three-year-old girls destined for destruction:

I have been watching several children in a dozen families grow up over the past five years. This is one of the hardest parts for me. When I see their father or mother coming home drunk every day, I know what the future holds for them and it hurts me.

I remember calling home to my wife crying because I had just held a beautiful 3-year-old girl on my knee. She hugged me and called me uncle, and I love her so much. But I know that it is only a matter of time until she is broken. Soon she will be drinking, and pregnant, and abused, and dying. Right now she is still perfect, but no one can last in an environment like that [Aaron Huey, interviewed by James Estrin, "Behind the Scenes: Still Wounded," New York Times: Lens, 2009.10.19].

Aaron Huey has been all over the world. He's dodged the Taliban in Afghanistan. He's hitchhiked Siberia. And he says Pine Ridge is "the scariest place I've ever been."

That place is South Dakota. It is as much South Dakota as our cozy little Chamber of Commerce meetings and pancake feeds.

Candidates—Congress, governor, Legislature—read the interview, view the photos, and tell us what you would do to solve the seemingly unsolvable.