<story><title>The Cherokee want a representative in Congress, taking up a 200-year-old promise</title><url>https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/25/politics/cherokee-nation-congressional-delegate-treaty/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>DoreenMichele</author><text>I hope this happens. Native Americans have unique challenges. A thing I ran across on twitter: Native Americans were being de facto disenfranchised because they couldn&amp;#x27;t use a PO Box as an address for purposes of voter registration and the reservations they were on only had PO Boxes as addresses for the residents.&lt;p&gt;I am guessing that this wasn&amp;#x27;t conscious and intentional. I&amp;#x27;m not suggesting some conspiracy theory to purposely disenfranchise them. But the sorts of issues Indigenous peoples face are not faced by most other Americans and they at least need a voice to begin educating the powers that be about ways in which their reality is overlooked and how this negatively impacts them.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Nasrudith</author><text>I suspect it is 100% intentional and they know exactly what they are doing sadly - property ownership or a fixed address is not a prerequisite to voting and it isn&amp;#x27;t permissible to establish new reasons for ineligibility. There is sadly a rich tradition of screwing people over and ignoring the plain text of the law.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Cherokee want a representative in Congress, taking up a 200-year-old promise</title><url>https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/25/politics/cherokee-nation-congressional-delegate-treaty/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>DoreenMichele</author><text>I hope this happens. Native Americans have unique challenges. A thing I ran across on twitter: Native Americans were being de facto disenfranchised because they couldn&amp;#x27;t use a PO Box as an address for purposes of voter registration and the reservations they were on only had PO Boxes as addresses for the residents.&lt;p&gt;I am guessing that this wasn&amp;#x27;t conscious and intentional. I&amp;#x27;m not suggesting some conspiracy theory to purposely disenfranchise them. But the sorts of issues Indigenous peoples face are not faced by most other Americans and they at least need a voice to begin educating the powers that be about ways in which their reality is overlooked and how this negatively impacts them.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rayiner</author><text>This varies by state, but note that, in North Dakota, for example, the 911 coordinator can have an address assigned in a quick process: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;vip.sos.nd.gov&amp;#x2F;pdfs&amp;#x2F;Portals&amp;#x2F;VotingInformationforTribalMembers.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;vip.sos.nd.gov&amp;#x2F;pdfs&amp;#x2F;Portals&amp;#x2F;VotingInformationforTrib...&lt;/a&gt;. Voting in places that lack infrastructure people tend to take for granted (fixed addresses) definitely poses challenges that state officials must address. I suspect at least with larger reservations, progress could be made by delegating more control over voting and polling places to tribal governments.&lt;p&gt;At the same time (as reflected in the comments below), people unfairly deride any sort of voter identification requirement as a conscious attempt at disenfranchisement, when in reality U.S. states have some of the laxest voter identification requirements in the world: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Voter_Identification_laws&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Voter_Identification_laws&lt;/a&gt;. I voted recently in Maryland, and I was actually quite shocked and a little perturbed how little verification was performed at the polling site. (I didn&amp;#x27;t have to show ID, just wrote down my address. Anyone could&amp;#x27;ve pretended to be me.)</text></comment>