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Counties Stingy with Federal HAVA Funds to Support Native Voting Rights

Stephanie Woodard reports that South Dakota’s Help America Vote Act Grant Board has approved the release of federal funding for satellite early voting centers in six counties serving American Indian populations.

  • Fall River and Oglala Lakota counties will provide early voting at satellite centers in western and southern Pine Ridge for the full 46 days of voting in the 2018 primary and general elections.
  • Tripp County will provide early voting at a satellite center on the Rosebud for nine days prior to the primary and general elections.
  • Dewey County will open a satellite voting center on the Cheyenne River Reservation for nine days prior to the primary and general elections.
  • Jackson County will open a satellite voting center in northeastern Pine Ridge for nine days prior to the primary and general elections.
  • Buffalo County will open a voting center on Crow Creek for nine days prior to the general election.

Why are Tripp, Dewey, Jackson, and Buffalo counties offering their economically and geographically disadvantages Native populations only a fraction of the early-voting access that other South Dakotans enjoy just by their good fortune of living closer to their county courthouses? Because that’s all their county commissioners asked for… and don’t come asking for more explanation:

Krebs said county commissions decide what they want to offer, and the HAVA board acts on their requests for funding. At publication time, email and phone efforts to reach Buffalo County commissioners for a comment on their decision-making process had proven unsuccessful. The commissioners “do not have offices,” said an unidentified woman who answered a phone number on the county’s website; she hung up abruptly when she learned the call was from a representative of the media [Stephanie Woodard, “Native Voting Rights in South Dakota—We Do the Math,” Indian Country Media, 2017.08.01].

As of the end of June, the state had $9 million in HAVA funds on hand, including $2,395,000.06 in HAVA funds designated to individual counties. Buffalo County auditor Elaine J. Wulff requested $2,100 to open the Crow Creek satellite voting station on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. for three weeks in October 2018. Multiply that request by 10.2 to get a full 92 satellite voting center operating days (46 primary, 46 general) at a cost of $21,500, and we could fund the six satellite voting stations for seven elections, through 2030, for a total cost of $1 million, one ninth of the HAVA funds South Dakota has on hand now.

7 Comments

  1. Rorschach 2017-08-02 11:51

    The simple answer to the question of, “why not?” is that the commissioners of these counties don’t want to help their Native American citizens vote. That is why outside groups need to put boots on the ground in these places and register voters and either drive them to the polls or help them vote absentee. Maybe an effort like this would oust some of the intransigent county commissioners. Rock the vote – 2018!

  2. Eve Fisher 2017-08-02 12:56

    First question: Why only $9,000 per county per election cycle?
    Second question: Is the $9 million still actually there?

  3. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2017-08-02 18:12

    Oh, Eve, you suspicious devil!

    As far as we know, yes, the HAVA money is still there.

    The $9K limit per county per election cycle applies to grant applications but not to requests for satellite voting centers to meet the needs of economically/geographically disadvantaged communities. Commissioners in Buffalo, Dewey, Jackson, et al. could request the $21,500 I recommend for 46 days of voting if they wanted, and SOS Krebs could approve it.

  4. Porter Lansing 2017-08-02 18:20

    Hypothetically, if Heide (I have a good friend from Watertown named Heidenreich and that’s been his nickname since he was on USA’s Olympic track team) was S.O.S. would he recommend that those counties set up maximum allowable voting opportunities?

  5. jerry 2017-08-02 19:29

    Thanks Cory for showing just how low these commissioners will go to screw over the Native vote. The last thing these rednecks want is for Indians to organize as they fear they will loose their health insurance and the other goodies that come with the job. It may be a good idea sometime to show just how much of an impact Native contributions to the counties amount to. Whites are always bitching about Indians not paying property tax while they feel they pay the total amount. Wonder what the tally is for white taxpayers and how much the fed kicks into these counties for their welfare.

    In order to keep the social order in these sparsely settled county’s the white’s must have the upper hand. They get that by suppression of the vote.

  6. Roger Cornelius 2017-08-03 12:30

    If South Dakota republicans continue their attempts at voter suppression the NAACP just might end up banning travel to South Dakota just as they did in Missouri.

  7. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2017-08-03 17:52

    Roger, we can act like jerks to our own people only so much before the rest of the world notices and takes serious action to stop our unjustices. Maybe that’s why we hear so much anti-out-of-stater propaganda from the SDGOP: they don’t want outsiders noticing and challenging us on all the wrongs we do.

    Porter, any good SOS would do more than recommend that counties set up maximum allowable voting opportunities; any good SOS would demand it, work hard to secure ongoing federal and state funding to expand that maximum, and push for legislative action to guarantee those opportunities.

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