For the Indian Country Today Media Network, Stephanie Woodard monitored enforcement of voting rights reforms for historically disenfranchised Alaska Natives. Alaska Natives had won a language assistance lawsuit and had organized early voting – better suited for subsistence hunters and fishermen who cannot plan trips to distant voting locations on Election Day. The result: turnout soared.
But at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, she discovered evidence of voter suppression. The Justice Department intervened, and Native voter turnout surged.
Read the five-part series from Alaska: (A Seat at the Table), (Celebrates), (Election Morning), (The Alaska Native Way), and (One Voter at a Time), her photo-essay on Huffington Post, and the two-part series from South Dakota, (The Sheriff), and (A Bumpy Road).
[Reporting sponsored by The Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation.]
Photo credit: Stephanie Woodard