American Indians Cite Voter Intimidation: "American Indian Charon Asetoyer says that when she went to vote a few years ago, a white man gave her the finger and asked her in vulgar terms what she was doing there.

She says she told him she had a right to vote, and she went back to her car to wait for him to leave. Only when he sped away did she walk inside.

'It's outright racism,' said Asetoyer, who lives on the Yankton Sioux Indian Reservation in impoverished Charles Mix County, where Indians are about one-third of the population.

While the federal Voting Rights Act has brought them a long way from the days when some states required that they be 'civilized' to cast ballots, many Indians around the country say they still face intimidation, restrictive voting requirements and long distances to reach polling places."

...

"They cite, for example, South Dakota's new voter identification law, which requires photo identification at the polls, a problem for many on the reservations who do not have IDs. The law permits those without identification to sign an affidavit, but opponents argue there is confusion about what is allowed. The American Civil Liberties Union has challenged other voter ID statutes seen as burdensome to Indians in Albuquerque, N.M., and Minnesota."

(Via Salon.)