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Red Lake Nation ejects Republican poll watcher
Wednesday, November 3, 2004

The Red Lake Nation in northern Minnesota ejected a Republican poll watcher from the reservation on Tuesday after officials accused him of being disruptive.

The reservation is normally closed to outsiders and, in the past, no poll watchers have come to observe the election. That changed this year when at least three Republicans and one Democrat visited the four precincts on the reservation.

At one precinct, a Republican poll watcher was accused of disorderly conduct. "He was looking over their shoulders. He was selecting people at random and he was interfering with the election judge," Donna White Feather, the co-chair of the tribe's political education committee, told Indianz.Com.

White Feather was not a witness to the incident. But she works at the tribal office and was present when complaints came in.

"As soon as we knew there was poll watchers we got on it," she said.

White Feather said an election judge called the tribal police to seek the removal of the person. The police chief confirmed that the man was escorted off the reservation. Attempts to contact the man, identified by the chief as John Magnuson, were not successful and the Minnesota Republican Party did not return a request for comment.

Floyd Jourdain Jr., the tribe's chairman, said the poll watchers were intimidating. "It seems like a deliberate attempt to dissuade or deter voters from getting the right to vote," he told The Minneapolis Star Tribune.

The paper reported that Magnuson is an attorney from the Washington, D.C., area. He told the paper he didn't stop anyone from voting. Local officials said the tribe's election judges were following the law.

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Large turnout in state (The Minneapolis Star Tribune 11/3)
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Red Lake Nation - http://www.redlakenation.org

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