Indigenous people face voting obstacles from past and ongoing discrimination

Lori Wise and her husband moved from her home state of Oklahoma to Georgia in 1999, but she did not learn of her paternal Ponca Nation ancestry until 2018, when she discovered the identity of her biological parents and met her biological father for the first time in Oklahoma.

The following year, Wise met the formal requirements to become a federally recognized tribal member and voted for the first time as a “Native American” in the 2020 presidential election. Her federally recognized, Ponca tribal ID card with her photograph should have been proof enough to vote, but she had heard about such tribal IDs being rejected and had read about significant numbers of mail-in ballots in Gwinnett County being thrown out in 2018. So, instead, she used her Georgia driver’s license.

“It was such an important election in 2020 that I didn’t want it to be thrown out,” Wise said. “It meant so much to me to vote in that election, but absolutely I would have preferred to have used my tribal ID. I want people to know that Indigenous people are still alive, still here and have history. Native Americans weren’t really allowed to vote until 1965. With my vote, I am using my voice.”

Indigenous Americans have faced fights over land seizures, citizenship and their very identity for centuries in the U.S. They finally gained the unfettered right to vote with the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 but today face new challenges because of harsh new voter suppression laws enacted in numerous states, particularly Georgia and Florida.

That’s why the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Vote Your Voice program, a partnership with the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta, is providing grants to grassroots organizations whose work includes support for Indigenous communities in the SPLC’s five Deep South focus states.

In Georgia, grants were awarded in 2023 for program work in 2023-2024 to VoteRiders ($125,000), the New Disabled South ($200,000) and the New Georgia Project ($200,000).

“Since the signing of the Indian Citizenship Act 100 years ago, Native Americans have been fighting for their right to vote,” said Robin Brulé, Vote Your Voice program officer for the SPLC. “Despite attacks on their voting rights, Indigenous leaders continue to focus on getting people to the polls and encouraging the next generation to become more civically engaged.” 

Just since the 2020 election – when Democrats won the presidency, retained the House of Representatives and took control of the Senate – 24 states have passed voter suppression laws, and 17 states have passed new or stricter voter ID laws that will be in effect for the Nov. 5 general election. Arizona was the only state with a proof of citizenship requirements for some races in 2024, but Louisiana will require documentary proof of citizenship, such as a U.S. birth certificate or passport, as proof of citizenship for voter registration, starting next year.

“The legislative changes after 2020, when the state flipped, have had a big impact and made it much harder to get a mail-in ballot,” said Jenn Hadley, Wise’s daughter and an advocate for transgender rights in Georgia.

Georgia advocates are determined to outmaneuver the new barriers by working in overdrive to educate and register voters of color and create plans to transport them to the polls. Although Indigenous people comprised less than 1% of the state population in 2023, their voting rates have risen nationwide in recent years, prompting activists to increase outreach and support.

“Our work is rooted in a belief that our democracy is richer and deeper when all people are actively involved,” Brulé said.

Path to the ballot

The road to the ballot box for Indigenous people in the U.S. has been long and arduous, one marked by violence and displacement. For centuries, they were viewed as separate – and not equal. 

The question of how much self-governance the U.S. government conferred on Indigenous Americans through treaties was hotly contested in the early 1830s. At the time, President Andrew Jackson sought to claim all Indigenous land east of the Mississippi River, forcing the removal of about 50,000 Indigenous people from 25 million acres and resettling them in Western states. After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1832 in Worcester v. Georgia that tribal sovereignty rights took precedence over Georgia’s, Jackson moved ahead with his plan anyway, setting the stage for a form of institutional white supremacy that is still in effect today.

In 1924, Indigenous people gained citizenship but not the right to vote. In 1948, they secured that right, but some states still barred many from voting through voter suppression laws, as they did with many Black Americans in the Deep South throughout the Jim Crow era.

It took the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to give underrepresented populations hope for political power. The act’s Section 2 prohibited practices that deny the right to vote on the basis of race, and its Section 5 pre-clearance provision required states with a history of voter discrimination to obtain U.S. Department of Justice approval before new voting laws or rules could be implemented.

In 2013, however, the Supreme Court ruled in Shelby v. Holder that Section 5 was unconstitutional, clearing the way for new legislative roadblocks to keep people of color from voting.

This only added to the centuries of distrust among Indigenous people.

“The long history of violence, broken treaties and discrimination instills understandable mistrust of U.S. institutions and the voting process among the Indigenous,” said Lauren Kunis, CEO of VoteRiders, a nationwide organization that helps vulnerable populations – including Indigenous Americans, people with disabilities, transgender people and nonbinary people – obtain accepted forms of ID for voting. The organization has over 12,000 volunteers across the country and field offices in eight states, including Florida and Georgia.

Lack of uniformity

Because of their history, Indigenous Americans living in rural areas and on tribal lands face barriers to voting that most Americans do not.

They often lack smartphones and access to broadband, cutting them off from critical voter information. Many don’t have verifiable postal addresses on reservations or in other remote locations. For unhoused people and people without reliable vehicles, long distances to offices that issue voter IDs create additional hurdles. Then, too, they might not have driver’s licenses due to advanced age, disability or being unable to afford a vehicle.

“According to our new research, citizens of color are nearly four times more likely than white citizens to lack the form of ID that is increasingly required for voting,” Kunis said, “There is also massive confusion and misinformation around voter ID laws in each state. Every election, many eligible voters self-disenfranchise – across all political affiliations – because of not understanding the voter ID laws where they live. For example, in many states, a student ID or tribal ID is accepted at the polls, as is a non-photo ID like a utility bill or paycheck. But if you don’t know that, you may stay home. That’s often the case with Indigenous voters. These micro barriers and inconvenience factors make lower rates of participation understandable.”

Even obtaining a tribal ID can sometimes prove difficult and time-consuming.

Getting a federal tribal ID requires someone to be an “enrolled” tribal member. That means they must prove tribal lineage. Even then, federal IDs are not accepted in all states. Many Indigenous Americans live in the 16 states, including Georgia, that do not have any federally recognized tribes. About half of all Indigenous Americans live away from tribal lands.

The lack of uniformity in ID requirements for Indigenous voters in each of the SPLC’s five focus states illustrates the problem:

• Florida does not accept tribal IDs issued by its two federally recognized tribes, the Seminole and Miccosukee, as an accepted form of voter ID.
• Georgia accepts a tribal ID with a photo for in-person voting. For absentee ballots, the voter must provide a photo or clear photocopy of the tribal ID, which requires more time and effort on the voter’s part. 
• Alabama’s Poarch tribe is the only federally recognized tribe. Nine others are state recognized. The state accepts tribal IDs as voter ID.
• Mississippi has one federally recognized tribe, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, and no tribes are recognized by the state. It has no federal Bureau of Indian Affairs office to provide federal resources. It accepts tribal IDs that have a photo as voter ID. 
• Louisiana accepts a tribal ID as voter ID so long as it has both a photo and the voter’s signature.

Even after meeting all requirements to vote, Indigenous voters may still face resistance by poll workers who are unfamiliar with tribal IDs.

“A poll worker may say, ‘What’s that? I need to talk to my supervisor,’” Kunis said. “Indigenous voters may be shamed and intimidated; ‘otherized.’ This type of incident can make Indigenous voters not feel welcomed into the process, but we’re proud to be empowering voters with the information they need to cast a ballot with confidence.”

‘Thrown off the rolls’

Zan Thornton, who founded and operates the grassroots disability rights nonprofit Georgia ADAPT, said that implicit racism is widespread throughout the very government entities charged with assisting tribal members.

The group is a plaintiff in the lawsuit challenging Georgia’s SB 202, a voter suppression law enacted in 2021. The group and other plaintiffs are represented by the SPLC and allied organizations. In August 2023, a federal court struck down certain provisions in the law – such as a ban on providing food and water to voters waiting in lines farther than 150 feet from the polls – but the case is ongoing.

Thornton has a disability, and she is a “Two-Spirit” – a revered role historically reserved for medicine people and leaders for their embodiment of both cisgender female and male identities.

To make her point about implicit prejudice, Thornton recalled her unsuccessful efforts during the COVID pandemic to obtain gloves, masks, thermometers and other protective equipment for Indigenous Georgians and Alabamians from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s regional office in Alabama and Federal Emergency Management Agency representatives. A 2021 Princeton University study found that the Indigenous Americans’ death rate from COVID was 2.8 times the rate of white Americans and “considerably higher” than rates for Black and Latinx people in the U.S.

“The Alabama Emergency Management Agency denied the supplies and told the vice chief of the Ma-Chis Nation of Alabama, ‘You Indians take care of your own,’” Thornton said.

In the end, Thornton sent four truckloads of sanitary supplies she secured from friends and organization partners to five tribes in Alabama and Georgia.

“I was told by a federal insider, ‘Don’t say Native or Indian or Indigenous, because folks won’t give them anything.”’

Through its Roll2thepolls.vote program, Georgia ADAPT has worked with more than 100 state and local organizations – including New Disabled South, its main financial sponsor; the New Georgia Project; Poor People’s Campaign; and Ride Share to Vote – to check voter registrations, hold virtual education sessions, including those geared to Indigenous voters, and plan bus rides to the polls.

Thornton projects that between Oct.15, when early voting began, and Election Day, the group will have made 2,000 rides, running 12 hours a day.

“Black people get thrown off voter rolls, Indigenous people get thrown off voter rolls,” Thornton said, “so you can’t just ask them if they are registered. You have to check their status. How can they do that if they don’t have internet?”

Image at top: Pins are displayed at a counter during a cultural meeting at the Comanche Nation fairgrounds in Lawton, Oklahoma, on Sept. 30, 2023. (Credit: Chandan Khanna/AFP)