Can Native Voters Carry Montana?

Fort Peck is the second-largest of Montana’s seven reservations, but the obstacles Native voters face here aren’t unique. Turnout in reservation counties often lags behind the statewide average, and it’s fallen drastically in recent election cycles. In the 2020 general election, for example, turnout in Big Horn County (which contains most of the Crow Reservation) trailed the state average by 16 points. That could have wide-ranging repercussions. In Montana, low reservation turnout could hurt Native political representation in the state. Nationally, the difference here could be the difference in a Senate race — between Democrat Jon Tester and Republican Tim Sheehy — that could determine whether Democrats hold onto the Senate.

Montana’s politics have taken a hard right turn in recent years, driven in part by an influx of wealthy, right-wing newcomers. Republicans have won a two-thirds majority in the state legislature and pushed Democrats out of all statewide offices, save one — the Senate seat held by Jon Tester for three terms. Tester, a farmer from the remote prairie town of Big Sandy, won reelection in 2018 by only 18,000 votes. Polls show him trailing Sheehy, a Navy SEAL and millionaire business owner who moved to Montana 10 years ago.

For comparison, some 60,000 eligible Native voters live in Montana, and they tend to vote heavily Democratic. On voting maps, the reservations are islands of blue in the red of rural districts. So the question is turnout, and a close race could come down to how many Native voters are able to vote.

The stakes are high, both for Democrats and for Native communities, says Sharon Stewart-Peregoy. A Crow tribal member, Stewart-Peregoy is a Democratic representative in the state legislature and is running for a state Senate seat in a district that encompasses the Crow and Northern Cheyenne reservations.

“Under Republican leadership here in Montana,” Stewart-Peregoy says, ​“we have suffered, my constituents have suffered.” She worries sending Sheehy to the U.S. Senate would only make things worse.

In audio clips published by Char-Koosta News in August, Sheehy can be heard at campaign fundraising events making racist comments about drunk Indians. Sheehy has so far refused to apologize.

Stewart-Peregoy puts it this way: ​“I wouldn’t want to be represented by a racist bigot who’s not going to respect our interests.”

Neither Sheehy nor the Montana GOP responded to requests for comment.

For Sami Walking Bear, a member of the Crow Tribe and the outreach and field director for the nonpartisan organization Western Native Voice, the campaign to overcome obstacles to Native voting begins long before Election Day.

Between the 2020 and 2024 primaries, most Montana counties added registered voters — except, nearly all counties that contain reservations cut voters from their rolls, often in large numbers. Roosevelt County, which contains most of Fort Peck, cut 257, or 4.5%, of its voters. Glacier County, which contains most of the Blackfeet Reservation, cut 221, or 2.7%, of its voters. Many of these voters may not realize they’re no longer registered, says Walking Bear, which creates obstacles they’re unlikely to overcome on Election Day. Western Native Voice has teams of locals on the ground, on every reservation and in Great Falls and Billings, working against the clock to register voters before late registration begins. But registering reservation voters has its own obstacles.

Walking Bear says that, when the group began this campaign, many counties didn’t want to accept ​“unconventional” addresses on the registration forms. ​“On the reservation, we often don’t have addresses,” she says. Instead, her field teams help people fill out the forms using ​“descriptive addresses,” which could be GPS coordinates or something like ​“3.5 miles northwest on Grapevine Road, first orange house on the right.” Those addresses satisfy the legal requirements, Walking Bear says, but convincing county election clerks has been a job in itself.

Besides the structural obstacles, Walking Bear says many Native people have ambivalent feelings about voting: ​“To go vote in a country that has shown little interest in Natives, it’s hard to get on that bandwagon.” But she sees voting as a means to build Native political power and win seats at the table. ​“I tell people: ​‘If our votes aren’t important, why do they make it so hard for us to register and vote?’”

This year, Walking Bear’s field teams aren’t the only ones trying to turn out the Native vote. In March, the Montana Democratic Party announced a seven-figure voter outreach campaign in Indian Country, hiring organizers and setting up field offices across the state.

Organizers for both the Montana Democratic Party and nonpartisan Western Native Voice hope the resources they’re pouring into Native communities will be enough to help Native voters overcome those obstacles — obstacles that voting rights advocates say shouldn’t exist. After Native voters and the American Civil Liberties Union sued the state over voting access in 2013, the Montana secretary of state issued a directive that requires counties to establish satellite election offices on qualifying reservations, where people could cast early ballots and register late without having to drive long distances. As this story went to press, a lawsuit is pending from Fort Peck tribal members against Roosevelt and Valley counties and the Montana secretary of state, arguing the two counties should have established satellite offices but didn’t.

Representatives for both counties declined to comment on pending litigation, though Roosevelt County Attorney Theresa Diekhans said the county is ​“committed to a fair, open and accessible election for all its citizens.”

The plaintiffs say in the lawsuit that not establishing these satellite offices will make it ​“harder, if not impossible,” for tribal members to exercise their right to vote — reinforcing ​“the long history of official racial discrimination in voting practiced in the State of Montana.”