A formidable voting-rights lawsuit just dropped in Montana. On September 30, tribal citizens of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation filed suit in state court alleging that the Montana secretary of state, Christi Jacobsen, and two counties overlapping the reservation—Roosevelt and Valley—are suppressing tribal citizens’ right to vote. The prospective voters asked the counties to open satellite election offices on the reservation before the general election, noting this is required by the Montana Constitution and by a 2015 Election Directive issued by the secretary of state at the time.
Montana has a long history of Native voter suppression. According to the lawsuit, during the 19th century and much of the 20th, Montana laws explicitly forbade Native voting and Native election precincts. This was true even after 1924, when Indigenous people became U.S. citizens with full voting rights. Today, the lawsuit alleges, Native vote suppression is still rampant.
“We are not going back,” said attorney Cher Old Elk during a September 26 press conference in Billings, Montana, to announce the suit. Old Elk, from the Fort Belknap Indian Community, also in Montana, described the lawsuit as a signal: “We are going to move forward with equality in our American Indian voting rights.”…