Is North Dakota Suppressing Voters?

This week, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to stay out of a legal dispute over North Dakota’s Voter I.D. law, which requires voters to provide a valid ID at the polls containing a residential street address. This means no P.O. Boxes or other mailing addresses, which is the subject of the legal dispute before the courts currently. The Supreme Court’s decision to not get involved leaves an 8th Circuit decision in place, removing a stay of the law. In plain English, this means North Dakota may rely on the voter ID requirements in the November 2018 Midterm Election.

Fun Fact: ND Doesn’t Do Voter Registration

North Dakota is the only state in the U.S. that does not require voter registration. Voters show up and provide ID and proof of residency. Then they vote.

This concept can be confusing to the average American. The narrative as we know it nationwide is “You must register before you can vote.”

To add confusion, some states have “same-day” voter registration, which allows unregistered voters to show up to vote, and register, then vote that same day. This is not the same as what North Dakota is doing.

North Dakota skips the paperwork — the paperwork that often leads to confusion, non-updated addresses, purges because people forget to reply to paperwork they get in the mail that says they still want to be able to vote in upcoming elections.

In North Dakota, an eligible voter shows up at their polling place on Election Day, shows ID, and can vote.

This is how it should be in every state. Every person eligible to vote in each state should are able to do so as easily as possible.

So What’s the Big Deal?

Historically, the use of registration to vote has been a vehicle to stop people from voting, by both parties, at one time or another. The how’s and why’s vary depending on time, party and place, but registration has always come with validity for doing so, along with ways to make it a reason to not let people vote. (i.e., “you left off your middle initial on the form so you don’t match government database records).

By not using voter registration, North Dakota has different challenges coming from a legitimate interest in making sure only residents of the State are casting ballots, and in the proper precinct for a district race.

A significant portion of North Dakota voters are Native American living on reservations or in rural areas. These areas often do not have street addresses to provide on an ID. While the law allows for supplemental documentation if a primary ID does not contain the current residential address, it does not necessarily address the issues presented by Native Americans. The State claims it is in the process of giving addresses to rural areas and reservations. I do not know enough about this to know it to be true or not.

Mailing addresses are not valid to prove residency, which is often what someone without an actual residential house number will use. For those of us who live in big cities, or who have always lived somewhere that has a house number and street name attached to where we live, this may be a hard concept to relate to. Rest assured, places without house numbers and street names do still exist in America.

My Two Cents:

It makes sense that North Dakota wants to ensure its citizens vote in appropriate precincts and reside in the state, which a residential address is key to validate. A mailing address can be used by anyone living anywhere in the country or the world. This seems more important in a state which does not have a strict registration requirement as other states do. Additionally, many services these days require a non-mailing address to use their service, as a means to prevent fraud (banks, for one) which in theory, should make this requirement less of an obstacle for most people.

What does not make sense is the lack of definition to the requirement of “residential address.” If this is further defined somewhere, the government fails to share this with its voters on the Secretary of State’s website that provides voting information. “Current residential address” is as defined as the term gets.

From a legal standpoint, that is broad, which can be a good thing, as it encompasses a wide net of “addresses.” However, it is also ambiguous, which allows the government to define the term as it sees fit in a given moment, and can lead to confusion on election day — one poll worker may accept addresses that fit their own subjective view of “residential address” while another may turn voters away based on their more narrow, also-subjective definition. I wouldn’t mind seeing the directives given to poll workers on this subject.

How does the government differentiate between a “residential address” versus a “mailbox” address?

P.O. Boxes are issued by the U.S. Postal Service and are easily identified.

However, a person can get a mailbox from a place like the UPS store, as a means to have a “street address” rather than a P.O. Box. There is no distinction between this type of address and that of an apartment or a business, depending how the mailbox owner chooses to write it.

Such a mailbox address could appear as “1234 X Street, #234” or “1234 X Street, Suite 234.” One appears as a residential address. The other, a business.

I can assume, since the state made it clear to the court that this requirement of an address is not meant to rely on an interest in property, apartments qualify as residential addresses.

I can attest from my experience working on numerous fraud investigations, these UPS Store-type mailboxes were often used to commit fraud because they are not easily distinguished as a Mailbox Store versus an apartment or business address.

Bottom line: the State’s legitimate interest is obvious in verifying a voter’s address, but if the state is truly interested in preventing voter fraud as it suggests, and is not seeking to disenfranchise certain voters, it may want to consider revising the statute to further define “residential address” and identify how a mailing address from a mailbox store is identified and distinguished from residential addresses. If I’ve learned anything, if a person wants to commit fraud, they will find a way to deceive to make it happen, and go to great lengths to do so. Since instances of in-person voter fraud are extremely rare, I do not see how this law, as currently written, avoids the fraud it claims to want to avoid.

Will be watching this one closely in the courts, and especially how it affects the outcome of the election in November.

Links to most recent court decisions:

Brakebill v. Jaeger 8th Circuit Court of Appeals Decision
Decision from U.S. Supreme Court to Stay Out of It