ACLU Charges South Dakota County Blocking Native Americans from Holding Public Office
Saturday, January 29, 2005 at 10:35AM
TheSpook
The American Civil Liberties
Union is suing Charles Mix County for violating the voting rights of
American Indians. The federal lawsuit, filed Thursday in Sioux Falls,
alleges that the county commission deliberately created election
districts to divide the Indian population. "There has never been an
Indian elected to the Charles Mix County Commission," ACLU attorney
Bryan Sells of Atlanta said Thursday. The lawsuit was filed on behalf
of four members of the Yankton Sioux Tribe who live in the county. One
of them, Evelyn Blackmoon, issued a written statement through the ACLU,
saying: "We have been without a voice on the commission for too long.
This is an effort to change that." The Rapid City Journal was unable to
reach any of those plaintiffs Thursday evening. The Journal also was
unable to reach Charles Mix County officials, who were in Pierre on
Thursday. Charles Mix County has three county commission districts.
Sells also said the ACLU warned the county commissioners in 2001 that
state law required them to redraw districts based on the 2000 Census to
make them more equal in population. "They didn't do that," Sells said.
He called the districts "a blatant violation of the one-person,
one-vote principle." [more] and [more]
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