beardycarrot:

onlyblackgirl:

gahdamnpunk:

This is messed up

What the fuck.

Yep, this is apparently an actual thing. The law requiring a residential street address to vote was signed last year, and while it wasn’t in effect during the primaries, it is now. There was an injunction on the law (because, uhhh, YEAH, it’s preventing US citizens from voting), but then the ND district court stayed the injunction, so the NARF obviously wanted to vacate the stay… and that’s what the Supreme Court shot down. That’s a lot of big useless words, so here’s the part that actually matters:

Native Americans are less likely to possess several of the accepted documents than are their non-Native counterparts. Among North Dakota residents who lack a valid piece of ID because of the address requirement, 48.7 percent of Native Americans, or an estimated 2,305 Native eligible voters, do not possess at least one of the supplemental address documents accepted under the law. Comparatively, only 26.2 percent of non-Natives who lack a valid piece of identification because of the residential address requirement do not possess at least one of the supplemental address documents accepted under the law.  This amounts to 15,908 non-native eligible voters.

Not only does this disproportionately affect native voters and those under the poverty line (by design, I’d imagine), but that’s also a solid 2.4% of the population. It’s unlikely that a race in North Dakota would be close enough for that to make a difference, but that’s not the point. I know that 2.4% doesn’t SOUND like a big number, but try thinking of it in more… human, terms. One out of every fifty eligible voters in North Dakota is unable to vote under this law. Let that sink in for a minute. Going by averages, every single class in a North Dakota school would have at least one student who had a parent unable to vote.

Needless to say, this is completely unacceptable.