Unlocking the Ballot: The Past, Present, and Future of Alaska Native Voting Rights

• Main Author: Kaplan, Zachary R.
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: Duke University School of Law 2020
• Subjects: Law; Alaska law review; Alaska
• Online Access: https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/alr/vol37/iss2/5; https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1582&context=alr

Racial oppression in American democracy is older than America itself. While most existing scholarship focuses on the historical disenfranchisement of Black and Latinx voters, this Note tells the story of the voting rights of a smaller, but still noteworthy marginalized American community: Alaska Natives. By contextualizing the history of Alaska Native disenfranchisement within the broader national landscape, this Note seeks to illuminate the ways in which the Alaska Native experience is similar to, and unique from, the experiences of other marginalized American communities. Although this history and present are rife with troubling discrimination, inequity, and non-compliance, this Note is ultimately a hopeful one, concluding that Alaska can – and must – take the burdensome but necessary steps required to fully establish and protect the voting rights of its Native people.