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Monitoring Native Voting Rights in Alaska, South Dakota

22 WomanVoting1

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