Second of four parts
Molly Hensley-Clancy of BuzzFeed News continues a report on difficulties of voting and remembrances of the Standings Rock Indian Reservations in Fort Yates, N.D..
“Phyllis Young leaves the ‘yellow house,’ which is being used as the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s get-out-the-vote headquarters.
“Four days before Election Day, a little army assembled by voting rights activists in Standing Rock stamped out their cigarettes, finished their coffee, and headed out onto the reservation.
“Some of them drove out to Family Dollar, the main store on the road down into Fort Yates, to find people in the parking lot outside the cinder block building. They went to the Diabetes Center, where they knew people would be bound to show up.
“It was Friday, so a group went to the tribe’s Commodity Distribution Office, where food is handed out, figuring that people would want supplies to cook for their families before the weekend. Others simply went to the homes of relatives and friends.
“Directed by voting rights activists and funded by an influx of donations that poured in earlier this month, the workers are trying to reach every voter they can on the North Dakota side of the reservation, which straddles both Dakotas, before Election Day.
“Like many buildings on the reservation, the house on the edge of Fort Yates that serves as the activists’ headquarters has no address, or at least, not one anybody here knows. It’s simply called ‘the yellow house,’ marked not by street numbers but by a run-down school bus with an image of Sitting Bull and a sign that reads ‘Standing Rock the Vote.’
“Inside, with the workers cleared out, a group of activists from across the country sat around a pair of folding tables in a linoleum-floored room.
“‘Today, we’re testing out our hack,’ Matt Samp, who works for the Native voting rights organization Four Directions, told the group. ‘We’re going over the fail-safe plan. Every voter is going to have a remedy and be able to vote in the election.’
“Four Directions is sending out the army of workers to first get people new IDs, ones that comply with state law, with valid street addresses instead of P.O. boxes or addresses in other cities. Once voters have IDs, (and) the tribe is covering the cost of them, the workers drive them to the polls to fill out absentee ballots, or urge them to vote in person on Tuesday.
“The fail-safe plan is for Election Day. If someone shows up at the polls without a valid ID, the groups have developed a system: A tribal letter with their address written on it, issued by a tribal official who will be stationed at the polling place Tuesday.
“Some people, they know, will show up to vote without knowing their address; they’ve never had one to begin with. For that, the activists have a plan, too: A series of maps of the prairies and dirt roads of the reservation, developed by researchers at Claremont Graduate University, where people can point out the location of their home and get an address based on rough estimates.
“Phyllis Young looks at a map showing the population distribution in Sioux County inside the ‘yellow house.’
“The state has a method of its own for generating addresses, the 911 system. But just one person in each county, the 911 coordinator, can tell people their address, and in Sioux County, where Standing Rock is located, activists say their coordinator has been difficult to get in touch with. Anyway, they’re expecting the system to be choked up on Election Day.
“The ID law allows a person to bring in a utility bill to prove an address, but many people on reservations live with family members and friends, or move frequently, and don’t have them.
“To make the fail-safe work, the activists have tried to think of everything. The tribe voted several weeks ago to make Four Directions’ addressing system its official one. On the phone, Bret Healy, a Four Directions consultant, told the group gathered in the yellow house that he thinks the state has no choice but to accept the addresses: Because cities in North Dakota get to make their own system, tribes should too.
“Later that day, Four Directions tested the fail-safe on a voter who showed up to cast an absentee ballot without an ID or address. Initially, the auditor rejected the tribal letter with the address, said Dan Nelson, the program director of the Lakota People’s Law Project, which has been working with Four Directions. The auditor called the state’s attorney. But then, after an hour of discussion, the auditor accepted the voter’s ballot.”
Continued next week