User:Ecs222/sandbox

Rose Emmet Young - add content has been added [copy over to sandbox to do future edits]

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[native american civil rights]

While not all Natives were granted citizenship at that time under a blanket law, there were some special considerations made to grant individual Natives citizenship. This in turn gave them the right of suffrage. For example, a treaty involving the United States and the Lakota people demonstrates this. In 1868 Article 6 of the Treaty of Fort Laramie stated that Natives could gain citizenship by "receiving a patent for land under the foregoing provisions… and be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of such citizens, and shall, at the same time retain all [their] rights to benefits accruing to Indians under this treaty". The advantage of this was that the Natives could become citizens yet still maintain their status and rights as Natives.

Even for signatory Native Nations to the Fort Laramie Treaty, however, it was made clear though that just because a few Natives were citizens, it did not mean that they all in turn had the right to vote. In 1884, when John Elk, a Native who lived in Omaha, Nebraska, attempted to register in local elections, he was refused a ballot. When he took the case to Supreme Court and through the Elk v. Wilkins trial, he was ruled against under the circumstances that Natives did not fall under the Fourteenth Amendment. The Dawes Act in 1887 continued to pave the pathway for Native citizenship in that members of certain Native American tribes who accepted an allotment of land was considered a citizen. The goal was for Natives to, through assimilation, "adopt the habits of civilized life". This movement certainly convinced a lot of Natives to gain citizenship. This is seen through President Theodore Roosevelt's statement on the allotment policy in which he reported that by 1901, 60,000 Natives had already become citizens of the United States.

Piece by piece, more acts were created that added Natives to the citizenship rolls. When the Native Territory (what is now Oklahoma) was abolished in 1907, all Natives who lived in that territory were made citizens through the Oklahoma Enabling Act.

Furthermore, after World War I, any Native who had fought with honorable discharge was also considered a citizen through the Act of November 6, 1919. As Native Vote states, "The underlying assumption of this act was that these particular Indians had demonstrated that they had become part of the larger Anglo culture and were no longer wholly Indian".

By the early 1920s, Congress was considering a bill to make the remainder of Native Americans citizens in their aim to have them "adopt Anglo culture". This finally was stated with the Indian Citizenship Act which was created on June 2, 1924. This act showed progress in that Natives would not have to give up being a Native to be a citizen of the United States. This included being an enrolled member of a tribe, living on a federally recognized reservation, or practicing his or her culture. However, this did not create the right to vote automatically.

There remained instances in many states that still prevented Natives from voting, even though they were citizens of the United States. For example, the attorney general of Colorado in 1936 declared that Natives could not vote because they were not citizens of the state. Similarly, states found ways around voting in other ways. Because the Fifteenth Amendment 1870 barred states from limiting voting on account of race, states found other ways – residency: claiming that Native Americans were not residents of the state if they resided on reservations, self-termination: one must first abandon their tribal ties in order to vote, taxation: Natives who do not need to pay taxes cannot vote, guardianship: the claim that Native Americans were incompetent and "wards of the state", and on the lack of ability to read English.

With World War II and the need for more soldiers through the draft, Congress reaffirmed Native people's citizenship with the Nationality Act of 1940. However, when some 25,000 veterans returned home after the war, they realized that even though they had put their lives on the line for their country, they were still not allowed to vote.

In 1965 the Voting Rights Act (VRA) put an end to individual states' claims on whether or not Natives were allowed to vote through a federal law. Section 2 of the VRA states that, "No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure, shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color". Further sections describe the measures taken if violations to this act are discovered.

However, efforts by states and municipalities to disenfranchise Native Americans are ongoing, such that there have been about 74 cases brought by or on behalf of Natives under the VRA or the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendment since 1965. These in the most part have proved to be successful to upholding the rights of Native Americans as citizens of the United States. Most of these cases are centered on states that have large reservations, or Native populations, such as New Mexico, Arizona and Oklahoma.

North Dakota Midterm Election of 2018
During the midterm elections of 2018, United States citizens were voting for what they thought would be right or wrong for their country. Native Americans in North Dakota right to vote was put to the test. Before one could go further, one must remember without the ability to vote, one lacks the ability to make a decision that may or may not affect one's self, family, community or people. Challengers of the voter ID laws claimed that they suppressed Native Americans' suffrage.

Voter ID laws are laws that require a person to bring some type of social identification in order for a person to receive a ballot, register to vote or actually vote. Typically, most states have some form of voter ID laws. However, three weeks before the midterm election, the voter ID law in North Dakota changed. The new laws required an individual to have a formal street address on their ID. However, due to the lack of street addresses in reservations, Native Americans often got identification documents using their PO box number. To help alleviate this issue and allow for the Native to work, they were given the option to call their counties 911 coordinator, describe the location of their home and be assigned an e-mail. However, there were several problems with this. The first was that it was too close to the election, thus, causing a logistic problem because of the large number of Natives this affected. Another issue it presented was that this new voter ID law went against the Natives in North Dakota’s beliefs. The Natives saw that no one owned the land they lived on, therefore, no one should be able to mark or name it with something like a street address. Many saw this as the Republicans trying to suppress the Native population's - one that would often vote democrat - right to vote. To combat this issue, the Four Directions, a group that represents the Lakota tribe, sent a letter to Secretary of State Al Jaeger. This letter asked if tribal officials would be present at the polls on the state reservation so that they could issue identification letters on tribal letter heads. It also requested to acknowledge the address issue they would use an addressing system for rural areas to assign residential addresses on the spot. However, this idea was shot down by Al Jaeger. He replied, “It is inappropriate for me to do so because it is a legal question that is beyond the authority of this office as to whether a sovereign tribe has those powers within their jurisdiction.” Prior to and on the day of the election, members of voting advocacy groups and tribal leaders, along with supporters and activists, worked to help Native Americans obtain the proper identification required to vote. Members of various tribes went out to persuade other natives to vote and organized marches to polling sites. According to activists present at the polls, tribal identification letters were being declined by poll workers. Furthermore, there were many cases of confusion amongst voters, where some could not vote due to problems regarding their addresses.

The voter turnout for Native Americans reached a record high since the 2008 presidential election. The North Dakota Secretary of State’s website reports that in Sioux County, over 1,460 ballots were cast, which surpassed the 1,397 cast in 2008. The Turtle Mountain Nation in Rolette County saw 5,102 ballots cast, which was the highest number of ballots cast in the tribe’s history. Despite the majority of votes for Sen. Heidi Heitkamp in both Rolette and Sioux counties, North Dakota Rep. Kevin Cramer won the election by a landslide.

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[compas]

Pretrial misconduct scale
The pretrial misconduct scale is used to determine whether or not to detain an individual prior to trial. The scales measures the risk of recidivism, violence, and the likelihood that a defendant will fail to appear.