Barriers to registration can change who is able to vote — and that can change who wins. When eligible voters are blocked from registering, entire communities lose their voice in election outcomes. Those communities no longer have a voice in decisions that affect their day-to-day needs and lives. Meanwhile, the non-citizen voting that South Dakota’s S.B. 175 claims to address is exceedingly rare and has not been shown to affect election results.
The Native American Rights Fund sent a letter to Governor Rhoden urging him to veto a bill that excludes eligible voters, burdens election officials, and deepens inequities in Native communities:
The Native American Rights Fund (NARF) respectfully urges you to veto Senate Bill 175. As written, S.B. 175 would impose unnecessary and harmful barriers to voter registration that will disproportionately burden Native voters and Native communities across South Dakota.
For more than fifty years, NARF has worked to protect the civil and voting rights of Native Americans throughout the United States, including in South Dakota. Through that work, we have repeatedly seen that Native voters face unique structural barriers to participation in the electoral process—barriers rooted in geography, infrastructure, and a long history of exclusion from the political system. Laws that add procedural hurdles to voter registration inevitably fall hardest on communities already facing these challenges.
Although S.B. 175 is framed as an election integrity measure, its real-world impact will be very different for Native voters. For Native people, legislation like this functions as yet another demand that we prove who we are and whether we belong in a democratic system that was imposed on us, not one we created.
Read the full letter:
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