Statement: The right to vote is considered a fundamental right but when the Fourteenth Amendment was passed in 1866, making all persons born in the United States citizens, Indians on reservations were specifically excluded. Almost half a century later the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 ensured citizenship for all Native Americans born within the United States. However, the Act did not automatically enforce the right to vote. While the Fifteenth Amendment declared that a citizen’s right to vote could not be denied on account of race, many states were able to find other reasons to deny Native peoples the vote—residing on a reservation, tribal enrollment, language, the unique process of mail delivery on reservations, and incompetency were all used as reasons for denying Native citizens the right to vote. Much of that has been corrected but with the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 decision striking down parts of the Voting Rights Act, new election laws in a number of states create significant barriers to Native voters. Lawsuits from Alaska to Arizona, some reaching the Supreme Court, are addressing these issues but it is slow.