Supporting Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Voter Education with North Dakota Native Vote

The mission of North Dakota Native Vote is to educate tribal communities to construct a representative democracy through community organizing, leadership development, civic engagement, and public policy advocacy. Since its founding in 2018, the nonprofit has brought its “Get Out the Vote” organizing efforts to communities across the state in order to remove hurdles to obtaining a ballot in North Dakota. North Dakota Native Vote (NDNV) also works toward building Indigenous data sovereignty, or the right of Indigenous people to govern the collection, ownership and application of its own data, particularly in the context of building electoral power and improving outcomes for Native communities in North Dakota. 

DSI and NDNV connected in early 2024 with support from the 11th Hour Project, a program of the Schmidt Family Foundation with relationships with both groups. As this partnership has grown, NDNV has successfully launched new data tools to support their voter education and elections organizing work. The pilot framework developed by NDNV and DSI includes two core components, the ‘Pledge to Vote’ data collection infrastructure and an interactive elections information map, which NDNV is using in its grassroots organizing leading up to the election. 

“North Dakota Native Vote plans to use this platform and data to understand voter turnout,  analyze policy impacts, identify barriers to voting, and address critical issues affecting our tribal communities that limit voter participation and voter confidence,” said Nicole Donaghy, Executive Director of North Dakota Native Vote. “Through our Data Democracy Program, we’ll transform numbers into narratives that highlight inequities and drive meaningful transformation. By examining voting barriers and other systemic obstacles, we can empower our people with actionable insights, fostering informed civic engagement and reinforcing pathways for Indigenous voices in policymaking. The Native Vote in every state has the power to determine election outcomes, we must learn to understand that political power, and demonstrate it to our communities.”

Over the course of this year, the DSI team, led by Susan Paykin, Associate Director of Community-Centered Data Science with Research Assistant Athmika Senthilkumar (Harris MPP ‘25), worked with Donaghy and NDNV Program Director Devero Yellow Earring, to scope, refine, and launch a pilot project supporting their 2024 Election “Get Out The Vote” effort. Importantly, each stage of the project was analyzed by NDNV and DSI for potential issues around equity and data sovereignty, with regular check-ins to discuss how to create improvements. 

The pilot project centers on a custom data collection framework that integrates into NDNV’s existing grassroots organizing systems and aims to address systemic challenges around voter identification requirements in North Dakota. North Dakota is the only U.S. state that does not require residents to register to vote, but it does require residents to present an ID in order to vote. In 2017, the state legislated new voter ID requirements that require presenting a “valid form of identification” before voting. That ID must include the voter’s name, current residential address, and date of birth.  These ID restrictions have had a disproportionate impact on Indigenous people in North Dakota, as state systems are less likely to officially recognize the home address of Indigenous residents, particularly on reservations lands or in rural areas. 

North Dakota Native Vote wanted to address this challenge to voter rights by making it easier to present proof of residential addresses, while building out their own database on Indigenous voters and their concerns. NDNV also wanted to use data to analyze how policy and lack of information affects representation and voter turnout on reservations. A key contribution of the ‘Pledge to Vote’ infrastructure is that it utilizes a technique called ‘reverse geocoding’, which allows residents to find their location on the map and translates that location into geographic coordinates and a residential street address. Technologically significant, the tool is also optimized to work “offline”, or in low-internet, rural areas, which is important for NDNV’s field work which covers remote areas. It uses open source software and technologies, which keeps costs low without sacrificing privacy or accountability. 

The interactive map shows voting resources across the state including electoral precinct information, county auditor information, and more. By digitizing PDF maps and employing geospatial analysis techniques, DSI developed this tool to make previously inaccessible  precinct information publicly available online. The map includes data layers that display polling locations, Tribal land boundaries, and post offices for mail-in ballots, providing a comprehensive resource for field workers and residents seeking voting related information and for organizers looking to visually depict geographic barriers to voting.  

NDNV has been using the tool over the summer and fall to reach hundreds of voters across North Dakota before Election Day. After the election, NDNV and DSI plan to continue to collaborate on data analysis and sharing findings from the development and implementation of the pilot project.

The collaboration was made possible in part by The 11th Hour Project, a program of The Schmidt Family Foundation. The DSI serves as a centralized hub for software and data science for 11th Hour Project grantees. DSI research staff work to lower the barriers to mission-driven data science through education, consultation, project-based applications and collaboration. Read more about the DSI and The 11th Hour Project here.