Patricia Bergie, Pete Calhoun, Gary Collins, James E. Large and Emma Lucille McAdams are registered voters, members of either the Shoshone or Northern Arapaho tribes, and Fremont County residents.

Today, they and their attorneys will present evidence in federal court in Casper that Fremont County's at-large - countywide - method of electing county commissioners violates the voting rights of residents of the Wind River Indian Reservation.

"The at-large method of electing the Board of County Commissioners of Fremont County was enacted or is being maintained with the discriminatory purpose of diluting the voting strength of Native Americans in violation of plaintiffs' rights guaranteed by Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act … and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments," according to the Indians' complaint filed in October 2005, filed by attorneys Andrew Baldwin and Berthenia Crocker of Lander.

But attorneys for the county have responded that the dispute centers not on race as required by the Voting Rights Act, but on myriad issues related to the history of American Indians.

"What may appear to be a racial dispute is instead a political, economic, jurisdictional or legal dispute generated by the political structure of tribes and the reservation system," wrote J. Scott Detamore of the Denver-based Mountain States Legal Foundation, one of the attorneys for the county, in his trial brief filed Jan. 26.

"Nowhere are these issues more acute than on the Wind River Indian Reservation," Detamore wrote.

Indian claims

The plaintiffs want the federal court to prohibit Fremont County commissioners from using the at-large method, and to not block an election for a redistricting plan for single-member districts, according to the complaint.

If the commissioners don't conduct timely elections for a redistricting plan, the plaintiffs want the court to implement a redistricting plan and schedule the elections so the county complies with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, according to the complaint.

Fremont County has 35,804 residents. Of those, 7,113 or 19.9 percent are Native Americans. Native Americans compose 16.3 percent of the voting age population of the county, according to the complaint.

American Indians are numerous enough and sufficiently geographically compact that they would constitute a majority in at least one single-member county commission district, according to the complaint.

Voting in Fremont County is racially polarized, which has discouraged American Indians from running for the board of county commissioners, according to the complaint. "The at-large method of elections for the Board of County Commissioners denies or abridges the right of plaintiffs and Native Americans to vote on the basis of race or color, or membership in a language minority."

In November, the first Indian ever was elected to the commission.

But the election of Keja Whiteman of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa does not defuse the lawsuit, said Laughlin McDonald of the Atlanta office of the American Civil Liberties Foundation Inc.

McDonald has seen similar events when attorneys for minorities sue over voting discrimination, such as the case in Lexington County, S.C., where no blacks had ever been elected to the school board until a lawsuit was filed, he said last week.

The efforts to win voting rights for blacks have extended to Indian Country, McLaughlin said. And when Indians have filed voting discrimination lawsuits, they have usually prevailed.

According to his trial brief, he will show that racially polarized voting exists, that there is an overall history of discrimination against Indians, how Indians have won in residency districts in Fremont County elections such as the board of trustees of Wyoming Central College, and the unresponsive attitude by commissioners to Indians' needs.

The key issue remains whether an elections system dilutes the votes of minority candidates, McLaughlin said. "You don't have to show purpose, just results."

County claims

But Detamore countered the lawsuit reveals contrary views about the situation in Fremont County and the Voting Rights Act, he said.

"We have very differing visions about what the law is," he said last week.

The application of the Voting Rights Act to Indians differs from applying it to blacks or other minorities, Detamore said last week.

"They are unique among minority groups and the Voting Rights Act precedent cannot be imported whole into the Native American (community)," he said.

Indians are both members of a minority group and members of sovereign nations on one reservation within Fremont County, Detamore said.

The results of county commission elections have less to do with racism and more to do with the political, economic and jurisdictional differences between the state, county and tribes, he said.

"The question is whether racism and bigotry in the electoral interests in at-large voting deprive Native Americans with voting power compared to non-Native groups," Detamore said.

If they lose elections, is it because of racism or lack of political skill, he said.

"Some Native Americans want to represent the reservation," Detamore said. "It's a legitimate point of view, but it won't get you elected."

Their interests are not necessarily the same as Fremont County's interests, he wrote in his trial brief.

"Plaintiffs' desire to elect an American Indian candidate to the Commission is nothing more than a desire for racial or tribal cohesion, not political cohesion," Detamore wrote.

Under Wyoming law, only counties with five commissioners can have single-member districts, he said.

Fremont County voters turned down a ballot initiative to create five commissioner districts in 1992.

If the plaintiffs prevail, the federal government will set up a commission elections system, he said. "Federal law (then) pre-empts state law."

Reporter Tom Morton can be reached at (307) 266-0592, or at Tom.Morton@casperstartribune.net.