PINE RIDGE, S.D. - Tom Poor Bear is a 46-year-old Oglala Sioux who has never cast a ballot in a state or national election. But that should change Tuesday when he says he intends to vote the straight Democratic ticket.
"I found out our vote is a powerful weapon, so I registered and now I hope we sweep this election," he said.
Poor Bear is among 24,000 newly registered voters in this sparsely populated state - about 4,000 of them Native Americans signed up by the Democrats in the hope they will tip the scales for that party's candidates, especially Sen. Tim Johnson.
The first-term incumbent is battling Republican challenger U.S. Rep. John Thune in a race that could decide control of the Senate.
So high are the stakes that President Bush, who will make his third trip to South Dakota to campaign for Thune today in Aberdeen, has turned the race into a sort of referendum on his presidency. But the votes of Poor Bear and other newly politicized Indians could be decisive in a state with fewer than a half-million registered voters.
In recent days, the Democrats' intensive voter registration drive on the state's nine Indian reservations has been stung by allegations of fraud, and some political observers wonder whether the controversy might deter new voters from turning out.
"If things get a little questionable, they [Indians] withdraw," Webster Two Hawk, the state commissioner of tribal government relations, told the Associated Press. "And I hope they don't do that. I hope they just go right on ahead and vote their conscience."
Allegations of fraud
Republican Attorney General Mark Barnett says investigators have found 15 absentee ballot applications with forged signatures, all linked to Becky Red Earth-Villeda, a contract worker for the state Democratic Party who has since been fired. Barnett said the woman, who also goes by the Sioux name of Maka Duta, might have been involved with as many as 1,750 absentee ballots.
In another case, Lyle Nichols, a Rapid City man who worked for a Native American group with no ties to the Democratic Party, was accused of taking names from the phone book and forging five signatures on registration cards.
Russell Means, a longtime Indian activist who splits his time between the Pine Ridge reservation and a home in New Mexico, called allegations of registration fraud "dirty, racist politics."
"The Republicans want to do the same thing they did in Florida - disenfranchise the disenfranchised," said Means, referring to the 2000 presidential race that elected Bush.
Means, who ran as a Libertarian candidate for the U.S. presidency in 1988, was equally scornful of the Democrats, whom he accused of seeking Indian votes and providing little in return: "The attention they pay to us during an election year is highly degrading and insulting."
In 1996, Indian voters helped Johnson - a protege of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, the state's senior senator - win a narrow, 8,500-vote victory over incumbent Republican Sen. Larry Pressler. Four years later, Bush won 60 percent of the statewide vote but trailed Al Gore in reservation voting.
Alfred Bone Shirt, a full-blooded Sicangu Sioux and longtime activist from the Rosebud Reservation, offered his view on why Indians, who account for 8.3 percent of the state's population, tend to vote for Democrats.
"Out in mainstream America, being a Republican might be different, but here on the homelands of South Dakota, it's the same as being a racist," he said. "The Republicans are these farmers and ranchers who are out after more Indian land."
Many Indian first-time voters will be motivated by personal and pocketbook issues.
Poor Bear turned to the ballot box in part because of his frustration with authorities who have failed to make arrests in the killings of his half-brother and cousin. They were killed in a village near the reservation where the only businesses are beer-only stores catering to Indians; they sell more than 4 million cans a year.
Alcohol is a long-term problem on the reservations, as is pervasive poverty. Two of the 10 poorest counties in the United States cover South Dakota Indian reservations, and the most poverty-stricken of all, with a median family income of just $15,531, is Buffalo County, home to the Crow Creek reservation.
Allegations of bias
Indians here say they suffer discrimination comparable to that faced by Southern blacks during the civil rights era.
South Dakota is one of 16 states that must comply with the Voting Rights Act, a law that protects minorities. It requires South Dakota to get federal pre-clearance for voting laws and procedures enacted after Nov. 1, 1972, that affect voters in Todd and Shannon counties, where the Rosebud and Pine Ridge reservations are.
But the law has been largely ignored for 30 years, according to a suit filed in August by the American Civil Liberties Union, which traced the state's defiance to a 1977 opinion by its then-attorney general, Republican William J. Janklow, now the outgoing four-term governor.
Janklow, who is running for the seat vacated by Thune, said at the time that the state need not comply with the law because Congress was considering changes in the act and the state was also considering a lawsuit to escape federal oversight. That suit was never filed.
In 1998, Janklow vetoed a bill that would have made it easier for Indians to vote by absentee ballot.
Janklow, who made a name for himself by aggressively prosecuting American Indian Movement activists in the 1970s, is a lightning rod in Indian country, where the mention of this name draws angry denunciations.
He is popular elsewhere in South Dakota and has never polled less than 55 percent running statewide. But his race against Democrat Stephanie Herseth, the granddaughter of a former governor, is extremely close, according to polls.
That worries Republicans because pollsters often have trouble getting accurate samples in Indian country, where not everyone has a phone.
While the close Senate and House races have drawn national attention, Poor Bear exemplifies the old adage that all politics is local. He said he was mistrustful of the state and federal governments most of his life because of broken treaties that led to the loss of tribal land.
But he decided to register after working with activists in Martin, a nearby town of 1,100, where Native Americans scored political victories in June.
For people in Martin, Tuesday's election is probably the most exciting thing that has happened since a B-17 crashed in a wheat field in 1944. Martin serves as the county seat for Bennett County, a white enclave carved out of Indian land early in the 20th century.
Site of Wounded Knee
To the west of the county sits the sprawling Pine Ridge Reservation, where in 1890, troops from the 7th Cavalry killed more than 300 men, women and children during a battle at Wounded Knee Creek. The Rosebud Reservation sits on the county's eastern border.
Throughout the county's history, whites have wielded the economic and political power. Now, the existing order is being challenged by Native American activists who accuse the county sheriff of racial profiling and are backing a slate of white and Native American candidates, including an Indian running in the sheriff's race.
In June, the town elected its first Native American school board member, Sandy Flye, and a new mayor, who is white. Three Native Americans also scored primary victories in their bid to win seats on the five-member county council.
"We have no representation on the city council or the county commission, and the white sheriff harasses our people real bad; it's got to stop, the sheriff has to go," said Jesse Clausen, owner of a construction company who helped organize the voter registration drive in the county.
The sheriff, Russ Waterbury, a Republican, called the harassment charges "bogus" and said they stem from his crackdown on drug trafficking, especially in methamphetamines.
Violet Justus, the co-owner of the video store on Main Street in Martin, was sharply critical of Clausen and the push to oust the sheriff. She said the poverty in the Native American community breeds crime and the police are simply trying to contain it.
"We have a sheriff who upholds the law - he should get a lot of credit," said Justus, who said she is an enrolled member of the Oglala tribe and a registered Republican.
"The ones he's after are the ones who commit felonies and run to the reservation, and when he gets them, they scream prejudice."
She said Clausen had stopped speaking to her after she refused to change her registration to Democratic.
In Clausen's office, he pointed to a map to explain why he was eager to encourage Indians to vote and reclaim some power. The map shows a checkerboard pattern of Indian enclaves surrounded by county land.
"This was one of the last big land grabs, in 1910; they opened up the reservation land for homesteading," he said.
"A few white people moved in, and within decades them guys spread across our area and took the land away from the Indian. Now most of the Indian land is gone."