Sec. 2. Findings and purposes

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A research copy — for the controlling text, always check the official state or federal source. Not legal advice.

Congress finds the following: The Constitution explicitly and implicitly grants Congress broad general powers to legislate on issues relating to Indian Tribes, powers consistently described as plenary and exclusive. These powers arise from the grant of authority in the Indian Commerce Clause and through legislative matters arising under the Treaty Clause. The Federal Government is responsible for upholding the obligations that the Federal Government has agreed to through treaties, legislation, and executive orders, referred to as the Federal trust responsibility toward Indian Tribes and their members.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly relied on the nature of this government to government relationship between the United States and sovereign Indian Tribes for congressional authority to enact legislation that singles out Indians for particular and special treatment. Morton v. Mancari, 417 U.S. 535, 554–555 (1974). Legislation removing barriers to Native American voting is vital for the fulfillment of Congress’s unique obligation toward Indians, particularly ensuring that Native American voters are fully included as qualified members of the modern body politic.

Board of County Comm’rs v. Seber, 318 U.S. 705, 715 (1943). Under the Elections Clause of article I, section 4 of the Constitution, Congress has additional power to regulate any election conducted at least in part to select Members of Congress. Taken together, the Indian Commerce Clause and the Election Clause give Congress broad authority to enact legislation to safeguard the voting rights of Native American voters. Despite Congress’s decision to grant Native Americans Federal citizenship, and with it the protections of the Fifteenth Amendment, with passage of the Act of June 2, 1924 ( Public Law 68–233 ; 43 Stat. 253) (commonly known as the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 ), States continued to deploy distinct methods for disenfranchising Indians by enacting statutes to exclude from voter rolls Indians living on reservations, requiring that Indians first terminate their relationship with their Indian Tribe, restricting the right to vote on account of a Tribal member’s guardianship status, and imposing literacy tests.

Barriers to voter access for Native Americans persist today, and such barriers range from obstructing voter access, to vote dilution and intentional malapportionment of electoral districts. The Native American Voting Rights Coalition’s recent 9 field hearings in Indian Country and 4-State survey of voter discrimination revealed a number of additional obstacles that Native Americans must overcome in some States, including— a lack of accessible registration and polling sites, either due to conditions such as geography, lack of paved roads, the absence of reliable and affordable broadband connectivity, and restrictions on the time and place that people can register and vote, and the manner in which people can register and vote, including unequal opportunities for absentee, early, mail-in, and in-person voting; nontraditional addresses for residents on Indian reservations, which make voter registration, acquisition of mail-in ballots, and securing required identification difficult, if not impossible; inadequate language assistance for Tribal members, including lack of outreach and publicity, the failure to provide complete, accurate, and uniform translations of all voting materials in the relevant Native language, and an insufficient number of trained bilingual poll workers; and voter identification laws that discriminate against Native Americans.

The Department of Justice and courts have also recognized that some jurisdictions have been unresponsive to reasonable requests from federally recognized Indian Tribes for more accessible voter registration sites and in-person voting locations. According to the National Congress of American Indians, there is a wide gap between the voter registration and turnout rates of eligible American Indians and Alaska Natives, and the voter registration and turnout rates of non-Hispanic white and other racial and ethnic groups.

Despite these obstacles, the Native American vote continues to play a significant role in national, State, and local elections. In Alaska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and South Dakota, Native Americans comprise approximately 10 percent or more of the voting population. The Native American vote also holds great potential, with over 1,000,000 voters who are eligible to vote, but are not registered to vote. The purposes of this Act are— to fulfill the Federal Government’s trust responsibility to protect and promote Native Americans’ exercise of their constitutionally guaranteed right to vote, including the right to register to vote and the ability to access all mechanisms for voting; to establish preclearance procedures for a specific subset of State actions that have been used to restrict access to the polls on Indian lands; to expand voter registration under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 ( 52 U.S.C. 20506 et seq.) to cover all Federal facilities, at the request of the Indian Tribe; to afford equal treatment to forms of identification unique to Indian Tribes and their members; to clarify the obligations of States and political subdivisions regarding the provision of translated voting materials for American Indians and Alaska Natives under section 203 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 ( 52 U.S.C. 10503 ); to provide Tribal leaders with a direct pathway to request Federal election observers, and to allow public access to the reports of those election observers; and to direct the Department of Justice to consult on an annual basis with Indian Tribes on issues related to voting.

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