A satellite voting office is opening on the Blackfeet Reservation for the first time. The new office in Browning would help reservation residents gain equal access to same-day voter registration.
Tom Rodgers, a lobbyist for Native American rights and a Blackfeet tribal member himself, says that extreme poverty and long distances often deny tribal members access to same-day voter registration.
"If you’re a single woman, and a mother, and you have $20 and a car that might not run, and it’s November, are you going to be able to drive to Cut Bank?"
Glacier County Commissioner and Blackfeet Tribal Member, Michael Desrosier, says that reservation residents would often have to travel over 70 miles round trip to register to vote in Cut Bank.
"And so there’s a problem with getting Native people to register to vote. And to understand that it is an important right and it is an important issue, that they … the Native people need to pursue, but because of the history it’s kind of been on the back burner, you know."
Glacier County has been working to open a satellite voting office for ten years now. Four Directions is group dedicated to helping Native Americans gain access to voting rights in Montana. In 2012, they sued Montana Secretary of State Linda McCulloch for denying equal voting access to reservation voters.
They plan to expand to other reservations in Montana and Nevada.