If you are a voter on one of Montana’s reservations, you have to work hard to make your voice heard. Reservations in Montana are remote and there is limited US postal service, with many homes never receiving mail delivery or pick up. In some communities, like Big Horn County, Montana, Native American voters had to travel twice as far as non-Native voters to cast their ballot. This combination of unequal treatment and unreasonable distances clearly communicates to people in tribal communities that their vote doesn’t matter— the system is not for them.

And, incredibly, Montana just made it harder for Native Americans to vote.

Native communities use get-out-the-vote drives to collect ballots and take them to distant elections offices. For those with limited access to transportation or postal services, it is the only way that they are able to vote. Montana’s new Ballot Interference Prevention Act (BIPA), makes these civic actions a crime. BIPA restricts who can collect ballots and allows organizers to submit only six ballots each. Bringing ballots to the post office for relatives or neighbors could result in fines from $500 to $50,000.

BIPA ignores the everyday realities that face Native American communities. It is not reasonable to expect voters to drive an hour to drop off their ballot, so collecting ballots in reservation communities just makes sense. Criminalizing dropping off ballots for fellow community members is unfair to Native American voters and does nothing to solve the real problem of mail not being picked up and delivered to Native homes.

So, NARF filed suit on behalf of five tribal nations—the Assiniboine & Sioux Tribes of Fort Peck, Blackfeet Nation, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation, Crow Tribe, and Fort Belknap Indian Community—and joined forces with the ACLU and the ACLU of Montana representing Native get-out-the-vote organizations. We sued the state to stop this restrictive and arbitrary law.

Montana’s BIPA is one more example of the ongoing efforts to take away the voice of indigenous Americans. NARF is committed to protecting the rights of Native voters and our shared ideal of democracy.