Oliver Semans: Native people pay high price for voting rights

“Everyone talks about rights, but they have a cost,” said attorney Sara Frankenstein in a recent article on ICTMN.com (“With 2014 Elections Looming, Ninth Circuit Agrees to Hear Native Voting-Rights Appeal”; February 28, 2013). Frankenstein is representing the Montana state and county defendants in the federal voting-rights case Wandering Medicine v. McCulloch. For fiscal reasons, she elaborated. Native American Indians in Montana shouldn’t expect counties to spend the money needed to provide them with satellite early-voting offices.

“We all can’t have everything we want,” admonished Frankenstein, who is also representing two South Dakota counties there in a similar federal voting-rights case brought by members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe.

Voting is the backbone of our democracy, and yes, we agree, it has a cost. Native American Indians and veterans understand this. Many of us have paid the price in full. Not the dollars and cents that Frankenstein references, but the ultimate cost paid by members of the armed forces—for some, their lives, and for others, lifelong pain and disability. The lead plaintiff in the Montana case, Mark Wandering Medicine, was severely wounded while serving with the United States Marines in Vietnam. His son, a Marine serving in a tank division, was one of the first Americans to enter Iraq.