Montana Tribal Citizens File Lawsuit Over Alleged Voter Suppression

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.”

“They came for our land,” Tom Rodgers told the press conference. He is president of Carlyle Consulting and a citizen of the Blackfeet, a Montana tribe. “They came for our children, and now they come to steal our vote.”

Officials in Roosevelt and Valley Counties have said variously that they don’t have enough workers, or they’re confused about whether they really have to set up the offices, as opposed to other counties, or they don’t know who wants the offices, even after voters specifically request them.

All this, despite the 2015 directive ordering “all counties with an Indian reservation” to analyze the need for services “equivalent to the services at the main election office of the county,” and, where needed, provide them. The directive was proclaimed after the state and its counties settled Wandering Medicine v. McCulloch, a federal voting-rights lawsuit that had alleged Native voting-access issues similar to those in the current suit.

At press time, Valley County had not responded to requests for comment on today’s lawsuit. Roosevelt County’s attorney, Theresa Diekhans, could not comment on pending litigation but said, “Roosevelt County is committed to an open, honest, accessible and fair election for all of its citizens.” 

A representative from the Montana secretary of state communications department told Barn Raiser that their office has encouraged the counties and tribes to work together to establish satellite offices and that any suggestion otherwise, including the idea that not doing so might support certain candidates, was “infuriating and ludicrous.” The office, said the representative, is “dedicated to serving all Montana voters and ensuring their voices will be heard in November.”

This latest Montana voting-rights lawsuit is another chapter in tribal citizens’ century-long effort nationwide to access the ballot box. University of Utah Political Science Professor Emeritus Daniel McCool and his co-authors describe this struggle in Native Vote: American Indians, the Voting Rights Act, and the Right to Vote (Cambridge University Press, 2007). “Indians have faced a prolonged battle to gain the franchise on a footing equal to that of Whites. Much like the struggle for Black voting rights in the South, this conflict has been long, arduous, and often bitter,” write McCool et al.

Racial animosity is common in Montana, and as a result Natives are cautious about leaving their own communities and prefer to vote on their reservations. In 2000 and 2007, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission issued reports confirming this reality, documenting the hate crimes, murders and police shootings that Natives face in white-inhabited towns near reservations in Montana, as well as in other states like South Dakota and New Mexico.

“Keeping polling places in White communities is a very efficient way to disenfranchise us,” OJ Semans, the Rosebud Sioux co-director of Four Directions Native Vote, has said.

Indigenous people make up a substantial voting bloc, and some Montanans may worry about their potential influence in the state. Individuals with American Indian heritage (alone or in combination with other ethnicities) make up about 9.3% of Montana’s total population of 1 million, according to the 2020 U.S. Census. This could put them in the driver’s seat in close elections, such as this November’s.

Montana’s early-voting period (called “in-person absentee voting”) starts in early October, so the plaintiffs are demanding an expedited hearing and court order mandating that the counties provide accessible voting places as soon as possible. “Each day that passes without full voting access will be a harm we can’t undo,” Bret Healy tells Barn Raiser. Healy is a consultant with Four Directions Native Vote and an advocate and fact witness for the lawsuit.

Native voters in Montana have long navigated a maze of relatively greater distances and reduced hours to register and vote, as compared to the those for non-Native voters. At Fort Peck—the second largest reservation in Montana, covering more than 2 million acres—voters travel as many as 90 miles round trip to the nearest county seat to register or cast a ballot in election offices in these largely white-inhabited areas. Voters from other Montana reservations may drive as many as 200 miles round trip.

Their cost of voting, calculated with the IRS mileage rate of 67 cents per mile, can top $100 per trip. And Natives in Montana are on average poorer than members of the white population. “They are today the poorest, most isolated and in some quarters, the most racially castigated population in the country,” sociologist Garth Massey, a University of Wyoming emeritus professor, wrote in an expert report for the Wandering Medicine case.

Native vote suppression has been going on so long in Montana, it may be baked into the worldview of some non-Native Montanans. This year, Montana’s Trump-backed Republican Senate candidate Tim Sheehy, a cattle rancher and businessman running against current Montana Sen. Jon Tester (D), was widely reported making disparaging comments about Indigenous people.

The Char-Koosta News, the official news publication of the Flathead Indian Reservation, was first to report an audio recording of a November 6, 2023, fundraiser during which Sheehy bragged “about roping and branding with members of the Crow Nation.” He said, “It’s a great way to bond with Indians while they are drunk at 8 a.m.” Attendees can be heard laughing.

On another occasion, Sheehy said Natives expressed disapproval with “Coors Light cans flying by your head.” More laughter.

The story was picked up by numerous Native and mainstream press outlets—local and national, print and TV. Sheehy has repeatedly declined to apologize, including during a televised debate with Tester September 30. If Sheehy defeats Tester, a three-term incumbent, it could be part of flipping a closely divided Senate from Democratic to Republican control.

These plans may have a glitch, though. An Associated Press article included speculation that Sheehy’s “unseemly” insults could spur Natives to vote for Tester. In September, a group called Natives for Harris, responding to Sheehy’s comments, endorsed Tester. At press time, Sheehy’s campaign had not responded to Barn Raiser’s requests for comment.

“You can’t change the past,” Tom Rodgers told the press conference to announce the new lawsuit. “But you can change the future. You have to figure out what kind of ancestor you want to be.”

Stephanie Woodard

Stephanie Woodard is an award-winning journalist who writes on human rights and culture with a focus on Native American issues. She is the author of American Apartheid: The Native American Struggle for Self-Determination and Inclusion.