Native American voting rights—United States

• TRIBES AFFECTED: Pantribal

SIGNIFICANCE: The related issues of Native American citizenship and suffrage mirror the larger views of the US government and the American public regarding the status of Indians in society.

In the early years of the United States, Indigenous American nations or tribes were viewed as sovereign or semi-sovereign peoples. The primary means of engaging with these nations or tribes was through treaties. This “sovereignty” was a legal fiction that courts used as justification to avoid treating Native American land claims like vested property rights. Such rights would have afforded the tribes, and possibly individuals, stronger legal claims. The first United States treaty with an Indigenous American tribe was concluded in 1778, ten years before the Constitution came into operation. More than six hundred others were to follow.

Questions of Indigenous American citizenship or voting rights did not arise in this early legal context, especially since the Constitution gives the power to decide who is eligible to vote to state governments. It is the states that decide who can vote, subject, of course, to any federal constitutional requirements. It was not until the passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, just after the Civil War, that Indigenous American suffrage could have been considered at all.

Amendments and Legislation

The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, defines “[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” as citizens of the United States and of the state in which they reside. The Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in 1870, forbade the states from denying any citizen the right to vote due to their race or color. At first glance, these amendments appear to settle the question of Indigenous American citizenship and voting, but the continuing fiction of Native American sovereignty was used to disparage the citizenship of Indigenous Americans who had not clearly left their tribal lands or reservations. It was argued that they were not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and thus did not fall within the terms of the Fourteenth Amendment. The result was that Indigenous Americans who continued to live on reservation lands and maintained their tribal affiliations remained ineligible to vote. This disfranchisement continued throughout the years of the “allotment and assimilation” movement. Under the allotment plan, Indigenous Americans could receive grants of land for their personal use, presumably for farming. Once the land had been worked for twenty-five years, title would vest in the individual owner, and they would become a full citizen of the state and eligible to vote, at least in the formal sense. The plan failed, largely because the majority of Indigenous peoples did not care to become farmers—most remained ineligible to vote.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, Congress began to look for other solutions to the continued poverty and disorganization of tribes. In 1919, Congress passed an act that conferred citizenship on those who had served in the armed forces during World War I. In 1924, the Indian Citizenship Act granted full citizenship to all Indigenous Americans who had been born in the United States, regardless of tribal affiliation or reservation treaty status.

Obstacles to Voting

Thus, in theory, all Indigenous Americans were eligible to vote from 1924 on. In practice, however, many of the same barriers to voting that were used against potential African American voters were raised for prospective Indigenous American voters. Grandfather clauses, poll taxes, and discriminatory literacy tests were all used. Prospective voters also had to meet state government standards about severance of tribal relations Indigenous people who adhered to their tribes were not viewed as “civilized” persons and were therefore ineligible to vote. Opponents of Indigenous American suffrage also argued that because the state had no power over the conduct of those living on reservations, and therefore, they were not “true” residents of the state, because the state had no power over Indigenous Americans living on reservations. In some states, Indigenous Americans had to meet the claim that, as wards of the federal government, they were in a state of guardianship and hence legally incompetent to vote. Indeed, Arizona’s Supreme Court maintained this position beginning in 1928 and did not reverse itself until 1948. Since then, however, all legal barriers to Indigenous American suffrage have either been repealed or struck down by the courts.

In areas where the population of Indigenous Americans is disproportionately high, political establishments still occasionally attempt to devise new ways of perpetuating White political control. Contemporary strategies can be subtler than the old. Redistricting to “dilute” the Indigenous American vote is one such strategy. Major problems that formerly suppressed voting rights and access have been solved. Both the federal government and the states have come to respect the principle of nondiscrimination in voting.

Voting Rights Act of 1965

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 has been effective in the expansion of voting rights for marginalized groups, including American Indians and Alaska Native citizens of voting age. Through this law, Congress provided for federal voting registrars who can be sent into states and regions where fewer than 50 percent of the eligible voting population is registered and where a voting device, like a literacy test, has been used. In 1975, Section 203 was added to the Voting Rights Act to expand voting access for members of language minority groups with low literacy rates and limited English proficiency. Section 203 required states and other political subdivisions to provide multilingual ballots and voting information in twenty-four states where Spanish, Asian, Indigenous American, and Alaska Native dialects and languages were spoken by more than 10,000 people or 5 percent of citizens who were old enough to vote, based on data from the decennial US Census. In 2020, federally recognized tribal governments worked with the US Bureau of Indian Affairs and state governments to identify Indigenous American areas and Alaska Native Regional Corporations covered by Section 203, while the Census Bureau worked with Indigenous Americans and Alaska Natives to identify statistical areas eligible for coverage under the section.

Voting Rights in the Twenty-First Century

In 2025, the Indian Health Service (IHS) withdrew its voter registration agency status at all federal sites following an executive order signed by President Trump. This move removed one of the key location-based mechanisms that had previously supported voter registration in tribal communities. The decision prompted concern among Indigenous voting rights advocates, who emphasized that health facilities had served as vital points of access for remote or underserved populations.

During the same decade, several legislative initiatives sought to strengthen Indigenous voting protections. The Native American Voting Rights Act (NAVRA), first introduced in 2021, proposed measures to improve polling access in tribal areas, recognize tribal identification for voting purposes, and ensure translation and ballot collection services in Native communities. Similarly, the proposed John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act aimed to restore and expand federal oversight of discriminatory voting practices while reaffirming language and access protections established under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Bibliography

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