Widespread suppression

IN 2018, MONTANA VOTERS approved a law that was originally framed as a way to address election fraud. The Ballot Interference Prevention Act, introduced by state legislators, put tight restrictions on who can collect a voter’s ballot and on how many they can collect. It also added a “registry form” for each ballot and a $500 fine for violations. But voting rights advocates say the law is part of a nationwide pattern of disenfranchisement of Native voters.

“It’s really creative how the Native vote is being disenfranchised by different states,” says Lillian Alvernaz (Dakota, Nakoda), the Indigenous justice legal fellow at the ACLU of Montana. “People were kind of fear-mongered into passing this law. Voter fraud is not an issue in Montana.”

Ballot security is