Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Judge blocks Montana ballot harvesting law at tribes' urging

Native Americans

Members of the Crow tribe in Montana, seen participating in a 2018 powwow, are among those who sued over a new law restricting who can pick up and deliver mail-in ballots.

Tom Williams/Getty Images

A Montana judge has blocked new state restrictions on the collecting of others' ballots, a victory for Native American tribes that say their members rely on the help.

The law probably violates the tribal members' right to vote because it would make it especially difficult for them to make sure their own ballots got from reservations and other remote areas to election offices, District Judge Jessica Fehr of Yellowstone County said Tuesday in putting a hold on the requirements.

Her injunction, while not final, is nonetheless the latest voting rights victory for people in Indian Country, who say too many election rules disregard their special circumstances and amount to suppression. It's also the latest turn in the generally partisan battle over so-called ballot harvesting.


The American Civil Liberties Union had sued on behalf of several tribes in March, challenging a state law passed in 2017 and endorsed by statewide referendum the next year. It says caregivers, family members and acquaintances can collect no more than six ballots in an election. Proponents say such limits prevent election fraud by preventing partisan operatives from conducting mass collections of mail-in ballots — potentially from both friendly and unfriendly precincts.

The plaintiffs say that's not what they're worried about. Their seven reservations are particularly isolated and many residents lack cars and are economically strapped — so they rely on others to ferry their sealed ballot envelopes sometimes dozens of miles to either the post office or the local election office.

The law explicitly prohibits independent ballot-collection organizations from helping tribal members cast their mail-in ballots. But without the help, the lawsuit argues, many Native Americans will "be effectively unable to vote."

The judge agreed, emphatically. The law "fails to enhance the security of absentee voting; it does not make absentee voting easier or more effective; it does not reduce the cost of conducting elections and it does not increase voter turnout," she wrote. And it would "significantly suppress voter turnout by disproportionately harming rural communities, especially individual Native Americans in rural tribal communities."

"This decision is a huge victory for voting rights," said Alora Thomas-Lundborg, senior staff attorney with the ACLU's Voting Rights Project. "This ruling removes a major obstacle to thousands of Native Americans in Montana who want to participate in the democratic process and vote free of illegal obstructions."

Among the 27 states where a voter can designate someone to return their ballot, a dozen have placed limits on the number of ballots any one agent can collect and return.

About three-quarters of the state's ballots have been cast by mail in recent years, a share that may only go up because of the coronavirus. Its primary was conducted entirely remotely because of Covid-19, a first.

Montana's three electoral votes are very likely to go for President Trump. But solid turnout on the reservations, which vote reliably Democratic, could help Gov. Steve Bullock's highly competitive effort to unseat Republican Sen. Steve Daines.

Read More

Mad About Politics? Blame Congress

House Speaker Mike Johnson and Republican leaders celebrate after the vote on President Donald Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on July 3, 2025.

Yuri Gripas/Abaca Press/TNS

Mad About Politics? Blame Congress

The judiciary isn’t supposed to be the primary check on the executive, the legislative branch is.

Whatever you think about American politics and government, whether you are on the right, the left or somewhere in the middle, you should be mad at Congress. I don’t just mean the Republican-controlled Congress — though, by all means, be mad at them — I mean the institution as a whole.

Keep ReadingShow less
Jennifer Greenfield Speaks Out for Colorado Families

Jennifer Greenfield Speaks Out for Colorado Families

When Jennifer Greenfield wrote an op-ed in The Denver Post warning that proposed federal budget cuts would devastate Coloradans who rely on programs like Medicaid and SNAP, she hoped her words might help change the conversation—and the outcome. Her piece drew a wave of responses, including appreciation from state leaders and an invitation to speak at a local event. Although the GOP’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” ultimately became law, Greenfield continues to warn about its long-term consequences. She spoke with SSN about the ripple effects of her op-ed and shared advice for fellow scholars who want their research to make a difference. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Q&A with Jennifer Greenfield

You recently wrote an op-ed about the GOP’s budget bill. What message were you hoping to get across?

Keep ReadingShow less
U.S. Capitol

James Madison foresaw factions tearing apart democracy. Today’s Congress, driven by partisanship and money, proves his warning true.

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Our Amazing, Shrinking Congress

James Madison tried to warn us. He foresaw a grave danger to our fragile republic. No, it wasn’t an overreaching, dictatorial President. It was the people’s representatives themselves who might shred the untested constitutional fabric of the nascent United States.

Members of Congress could destroy it by neglecting the good of the country in favor of narrow, self-serving ends. Unity would collapse into endless internecine strife. Madison sounded this alarm in Federalist No. 10: he foresaw the inevitable emergence of “factions”—political parties “united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Mirror, Mirror On the Wall, Who's the Most Patriotic of All?

Trump and the MAGA movement have twisted the meaning of patriotism. It’s time we collectively reclaim America’s founding ideals and the Pledge’s promise.

Getty Images, LeoPatrizi

Mirror, Mirror On the Wall, Who's the Most Patriotic of All?

Republicans have always claimed to be the patriotic party, the party of "America, right or wrong," the party willing to use force to protect American national interests abroad, the party of a strong military. In response, Democrats have not really contested this perspective since Vietnam, basically ceding the patriotic badge to the Republicans.

But with the advent of Donald Trump, the Republican claim to patriotism has gotten broader and more troubling. Republicans now claim to be the party that is true to our founding principles. And it is not just the politicians; they have support from far-right scholars at the Heritage Foundation, such as Matthew Spalding. The Democratic Party has done nothing to counter these claims.

Keep ReadingShow less