| The lawsuit in question claimed that voters' rights were violated by an organized effort to minimize the effect of whites' votes. If successful, the lawsuit would likely have shifted the voting off reservation and into the surrounding ranching communities, where voting rights of Native Americans were routinely violated just twenty years earlier. A positive response would also have questioned the right of Native American nations to administer and police their own elections - which would have raised serious questions on the notion of tribal sovereignty itself.
A lot was at stake.
The lawsuit was centered on three accusations:
--A "non-Indian" poll watcher was asked to leave polling places after the close of polling
--Ballot boxes were left unlocked at two polling stations
--A complaint was made that a voter voted twice under different names at different polling stations (second-hand testimony)
And that's where the case fell apart. Justice Cebull:
Unfortunately for Plaintiff, not every mistake made during an election serves as the predicate for a Voting Rights Act violation. The challenged situation must constitute a standard, practice or procedure.
[snip]
As applied to this case, the challenged errors - the failure to secure a ballot box or two, dismissal of a poll watcher after the polls had closed, and an anonymous complaint regarding repeated registration and voting - do not amount to a standard, practice, or procedure. These activities are not models or examples to be followed (standards), they do not appear to be a habitual application (practice), and it is not a particular way of accomplishing something (procedure).
And that's judgment was based on the assumption that CERA's accusations as to what occurred were valid, or that, if valid, they had any effect on the outcome of the election.
In short, sh*t happens. Isolated incidents don't make up a concerted effort or pattern of denying voters their rights. Anecdotal evidence proves sh*t all.
But isn't that how conservative attacks on good ideas work? Take the political debate on global warming. To crack the idea that there's scientific consensus that human activity contributes to warming, they trot out the crackpot meteorologist who disagrees, find the disgruntled graduate student who's rejected research proposal he blames on institutional prejudice. And so on.
If only there was a judge to throw out the bad arguments from civil discourse. |
