Voting Reservations: How Identity Influences Voting Behavior of Tribal Citizens

• In Event: Indigineity, Nativity and Boundaries of Exclusion

Abstract

Resources, namely those encapsulated by socio-economic status, are thought to be the primary determinants of voter turnout. In addition, community-based resources can propel citizens to vote, as can competitive presidential elections. Further, it is thought that racial minorities living in more integrated areas (i.e., white areas) are more socially incorporated and thus more likely to vote. However, political scientists’ conceptualization of elections rarely considers the voter calculus in sovereign first-nation elections. Given the near genocide committed upon this population by the United States government and lack of political and social incorporation into mainstream American life, we argue that American Indians living on reservations will only exhibit turnout trends fitting the resource model for elections for U.S. federal and state offices. Relative to American Indians living off reservations, we hypothesize that American Indians living on reservations will be more likely to vote in sovereign first-nation elections. We propose a theory of sovereign identity to understand this social phenomenon. We test our theory with voter registration and turnout data from the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and the state of Oklahoma.

Authors

• John Michael Burnett

• Loren Collingwood, UC Riverside

• Sean David Long, University of California, Riverside