"Native Americans have long faced police harassment, illegal voter challenges, and election-day chaos on the way to the polls in South Dakota. Those problems may soon be over on the Oglala Sioux Tribe's Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. That's because South Dakota has no clear plan to provide any voting at all in this fall's election.

The imminent disenfranchisement of thousands of voters follows resignations of officials in the off-reservation county that handled outsourced, non-tribal government services, including elections, for Pine Ridge's Shannon County. However, the crisis may also have arisen because Oglalas, members of the nation's most marginalized ethnic group, have emerged as deciders in South Dakota elections -- as have tribes in other areas since 2000, when Native support helped send Washington state's Maria Cantwell to the U.S. Senate. With Shannon County voters turning in the nation's highest Democratic performance in recent presidential elections, sidelining them is a game-changer in close contests, including this year's race for the state's sole Congressional seat, held by Democrat Stephanie Herseth Sandlin.

South Dakota's head election official, Secretary of State Chris Nelson, has taken a hands-off approach to the problem, saying the counties involved should solve it. If they don't, said Attorney General Marty Jackley, who's up for re-election, "the state will weigh the need to take action."

"What if the counties don't work it out? What's the state's plan B?" asked South Dakota Democratic Party head Erin McCarrick. She accused the Republican-controlled state administration, including Nelson and Jackley, of "foot-dragging" as the election gets underway Sept. 20 with early voting. This year, Oglalas had hoped for the full six weeks of this convenient and widely popular type of advance polling. Early voting has seldom been provided in Native communities, but when it has, as many as 46 percent of voters have used it. "

Get the Story:
Stephanie Woodard: South Dakota Election Scandal: Are Oglala Sioux Voting Rights Doomed? (The Huffington Post 9/20)

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