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Comment by RcouF1uZ4gsC | Hacker News Reader

Back when the treaty signed, Native Americans did not have the right to vote (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_civil_rights#V...) thus a delegate would have been the only way for Native Americans to have a voice in Congress. This is the same with the other delegates, who all represent places that do not otherwise have representation in Congress.

Now Native Americans all have the right to vote, and thus have a voice in Congress.

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.

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Many tribal lands don't have street addresses and in some states you have to have a residence with an address to vote.

Yes this was an issue in a race I worked last cycle in Montana. Deliberately hostile SOS to benefit Rs

Reading the "How to Register to Vote" indicates otherwise. sosmt.gov/elections/vote/#how-to-register-to-vote

Specifically "You will need to provide a residence address or specific geographic location information from which your residence address may be determined. The residence address must be in the county in which you are registering."

This clearly allows someone without an "address" to register. In my experience identifying the Post Office on or near the tribe's land is plenty sufficient.

>or specific geographic location information from which your residence address may be determined.

The 'from which your residence address may be determined" reads, to me, like you still need an address. If you don't have a residence address, how can you provide information that determines where it is? It's nonexistent.

"SOS"?

"Secretary of state," I assume.

Secretary of State, i believe.

secretary of state sorry!

Still? IIRC North Dakota tried to make that the law but it was struck down.

The supreme court upheld the requirement that IDs have a street address, but some (maybe most or all, not sure) of the tribal authorities were able to assign street names and reissue IDs in time.

We should all move to gps coordinates

GPS coordinates of houses can change, while the address should stay the same.

Do you mean if the same house is moved to a new location on the same lot? I'm finding this difficult to imagine.

No, I mean the movement of earth underneath the house, tectonic plates etc. Earthquakes are one obvious example:

https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/7182/does-an-earthqu...

To be fair, the cited displacement of 8 ft (average for non-earthquake situations is 0 to 10cm) is within the typical margin of error of a GPS. That is, the coordinate change is small enough not to matter for “election” purposes.

Addresses change a lot more often than gps coordinates. Streets get renamed, removed, or renumbered.

Fine... GPS coordinates as of a specific date.

IIRC, this "need to have an address" is something that had adversely affected some nomadic people Inuits of Nunavut, Canada. I guess that many of them were, more or less, forced to adopt permanent residences and it destroyed their nomadic way of life. It's something that had never occurred to me until a read an article on it. I'm sure the problem is more pervasive that I know.

Is there a reason why they don't have a street address in 2019? Do they not want them or is it funding or something else?

Not native American, but grew up in a rural area (in Canada). My parents only got a "street address" a couple of years ago. There is a land location system going back over a century, but basically no one who didn't live on a farm new how to interpret it (say 98% of the population), and so it was basically useless as an address. The new "street address" is actually based on the land location, but it is formatted like a street address (house number, road name) rather than specifying quarter, section, township, range, meridian. Throughout my childhood, we usually just used a postal address, but in the last couple of decades, bank officials and the like have gotten more and more insistent on a physical address which we were basically unable to provide.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_Land_Survey

Native American land laws are a disaster, and it’s not their fault. It’s a large contributor to poverty as well. I’m still not sure if that was an unintended or intended consequence of US govt treaties.

Why is this comment so downvoted? I'm not american, and I was also curious about why they don't have an adress.

As far as I know, only homeless people don't have an adress in Denmark.

EDIT: Great, now I'm downvoted as well! Huzzah!

Where I grew up in Montana, we didn't have a street address. Only about 20 years ago did they name the road (after my grandfather) and assign addresses.

All I have to say to this is a deal's a deal. Doesn't matter if it was 184 years ago. :)

The Civil War happened subsequently, in which many Cherokee fought for the Confederacy. 25 U.S.C. Sec. 72 allows the President to declare treaties abrogated by tribes engaging in "actual hostility to the United States", which alliance with the Confederacy certainly was.

So the issue is more complicated than you state.

* addendum since this is likely flame bait. The Cherokee, having been betrayed by Andrew Jackson and by the United States in general, had plenty of reason to support the confederacy. Have a look at Wikipedia for a historical overview:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_in_the_American_Civil...

A lot of people fought for the confederacy, but their descendants still have representation in congress because peace was made and status restored. Also I don't think you can make a case that the Cherokee Nation was at war with the United States during that time, just because some of its citizens joined irregular militias.

Cherokee also have representation in Congress because they have senators and representatives that they vote for every year just like everyone else.

I believe the sentiment is that Cherokees and other native american nations aren't sufficiently represented by their elected officials. in much the same way they have been marginalized for centuries.

Honest question: Do you think "one [hu]man one vote" is wrong?

Sometimes, if the voting methodology is bad.

The city of Yakima was found [1] to have violated the Voting Rights Act a few years back because they have a significant Latino minority and yet somehow no Latinos would ever be elected to city council. This is because every voter votes on every city council seat, and because the town's majority of white voters apparently has a preference for white candidates.

I don't remember what the solution was, I think they either split the town into districts, each with its own city council member, or used some kind of proportional representation system.

[1] https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/federal-court-rules-yaki...

No, but do you think that is an accurate representation of US politics? From the outside it seems that "one dollar one vote" applies equally well (and is equally wrong).

I don't quite understand your question. if you're asking whether I think the Cherokees deserve a vote in the house, I say "yes".

They're probably referring to the fact that the Cherokee members are already represented by their US legislators in the same way that other US residents are. Providing them this vote would give them more representation, and they're asking if you believe that's a better solution.

Would it? I think it's possible that other laws may mean that they have one vote, and thus have to choose whether to have their vote apply in the congressional district they are physically in, or to the Cherokee representative seat they are alotted for a non-geographical district. That would retain one vote for one person. This isn't even all that weird, I assume. Do people with residences in multiple districts get to vote in each, or do they have to choose?

They definitely have to choose, and many places I've lived in explicitly mention that also voting in another place (in the US) is a crime.

Relevantly - if their Cherokee delegate is a non-voting delegate, then while they may have two representatives on the floor of the house speaking for their interests, they only have one who can be involved in the formal exercise of said House's power.

A delegate would not have a vote on the house floor. They are more like an ambassador than a representative.

If "many Cherokee" can be classified as a "Cherokee alliance", Pemberton and Cooper, actual Confederate generals, should as well, applying these laws in context of the 14th ammendment. So no more representatives from PA or NJ?

Cherokees and Confederates? That's the oddest collab I could ever imagine. What was their official stance on the institution of slavery? That seriously is one of the strangest bits of US history I've ever learned.

>All I have to say to this is a deal's a deal. Doesn't matter if it was 184 years ago.

It doesn't work like that when you make a deal with the government. Just ask a native American if you don't believe me. :)

A tautology - US has disenfranchised and cheated the native Americans before so it should continue ?

I would agree with cheated, not disenfranchised. It's easy to make the argument that they're not continuing disenfranchisement here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laches_(equity)

They theoretically have a right to vote. Stop making laws that disenfranchise them, then you can consider changing the deal. But we made a deal. Plus the us has never stood up to it's side of deals with native americans.

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