North Dakota
Commentary: There’s one state in America with no voter registration. How does that work?
When he’s not busy slathering the White House in gold or recklessly sundering foreign alliances, President Trump loves to talk about voter fraud.
Although the incidence is rare — like, spotting-a-pangolin-in-the-wild rare — Trump persistently emits a gaseous cloud of false claims. About rigged voting machines, dead people casting ballots, mail-in votes being manipulated and other fevered figments of his overripe imagination.
Voting is the most elemental of democratic exercises, a virtuous act residing right up there alongside motherhood and apple pie. But Trump has treated it as a cudgel, something dark and sinister, fueling a partisan divide that has increasingly undermined faith in the accuracy and integrity of our elections.
One result is a batch of new laws making it harder to vote.
Since the 2020 presidential election — the most secure in American history, per the Trump administration’s own watchdogs — at least 30 states have enacted more than 100 restrictive laws, according to New York University’s Brennan Center and the Democracy Policy Lab at UC Berkeley, which keep a running tally.
Texas passed legislation allowing fewer polling places. Mississippi made it harder for people with disabilities to vote by mail. North Carolina shortened the window to return mail ballots.
In California, state Sen. Carl DeMaio and allies are working to qualify a November ballot measure that would require a government-issued ID to vote, a solution in desperate search of a problem.
“We have the lowest level of public trust and confidence in our elections that we have ever seen,” the San Diego Republican said in launching the effort, sounding the way someone would by lamenting the damage a fire has done while ignoring the arsonist spreading paint thinner all around.
Amid all the manufactured hysteria, there is a place that is unique in America, with no voter registration requirement whatsoever.
If you’re a U.S. citizen, 18 years or older and have lived in North Dakota for 30 days prior to election day, you’re eligible to vote. It’s been that way for more than 70 years, ever since voter registration was abolished in the state in 1951.
How’s it working?
Pretty darn well, according to those who’ve observed the system up close.
“It works excellent,” said Sandy McMerty, North Dakota’s deputy secretary of state.
“In general, I think most people are happy with this,” political scientist Mark Jendrysik agreed, “because it lowers the record-keeping burdens and saves money.”
Jendrysik, who teaches at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, said voter registration was abandoned at a time when the state — now redder than the side of a barn — had vigorous two-party competition and, with it, a bipartisan spirit of prairie populism.
“There was an idea we should make it easier to vote,” Jendrysik said. “We should open up things.”
What a concept.
Walk-up voting hasn’t made North Dakota a standout when it comes to casting ballots. In the last three elections, voter turnout has run close to the national average, which puts it in the middle of the pack among states.
But there also hasn’t been a high incidence of fraud. In 2022, a study by the state auditor’s office found it “exceptionally” unlikely an election in North Dakota could be fraudulently influenced. (Again, like the country as a whole.)
In fact, Jendrysik said he can’t recall a single case of election fraud being prosecuted in the 26 years he’s lived in North Dakota and followed its politics.
It’s not as though just anyone can show up and cast a ballot.
Voting in North Dakota requires a valid form of identification, such as a state-issued driver’s license, a tribal ID or a long-term care certificate. It must be presented each and every election.
By contrast, a California voter is not required to show identification at a polling place before casting their ballot — though they may be asked to do so if they are voting for the first time after registering to vote by mail and their application failed to include certain information. That includes a driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number.
Could North Dakota’s non-registration system be replicated elsewhere?
Jendrysik is dubious, especially in today’s political environment.
North Dakota is a sparsely populated state with hundreds of small communities where, seemingly, everyone knows everyone else. There are about 470,000 eligible voters, which is a lot more manageable number than, say, California’s 30 million adult-age residents. (California has more than a dozen counties with north of half a million registered voters.)
“It’s unique to this state,” Jendrysik said, “and I think if they hadn’t done it decades ago, it would have never happened.”
(Fun fact: North Dakota also has no parking meters on its public streets, owing to a state law passed in 1948, according to Jendrysik, who has published two academic papers on the subject.)
McMerty, of the secretary of state’s office, believes others could emulate North Dakota’s example.
It would require, she suggested, rigorous data-sharing and close coordination among various state agencies. “We’re updating our voter rolls daily — who’s obtained a driver’s license, births, deaths. That kind of thing,” McMerty said.
Again, that’s a much easier task in a state with the population the size of North Dakota’s. (About 800,000 at last count.)
And there’s no particular impetus for others to end their systems of voter registration — unless it could be proved to significantly boost turnout.
We should be doing all we can to get people to vote and invest in our beleaguered political system. Rather than wasting time chasing shadows and phantoms or indulging the delusions of a sore-loser president.
FARGO — Many in North Dakota are wondering what’s next for the Republican Party in North Dakota after the tension displayed at
the state’s Republican convention.
Several statewide incumbents skipped the process, prompting frustrated delegates to send a message, voting to symbolically distance them from the party by stripping them of their Republican label.
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CARTER COUNTY, Tenn. (WJHL) – A Carter County woman was jailed for months in Fargo, North Dakota, after artificial intelligence mistakenly flagged her for bank fraud.
According to the Carter County Sheriff’s Office, Angela Lipps arrived at the Carter County Detention Center on July 14, 2025, for violation of probation. The Detention Center was informed through the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) that Lipps also had a warrant in North Dakota for being a fugitive of justice.
The sheriff’s office told News Channel 11 that it informed the Cass County Jail in Fargo that it had Lipps in custody. On Oct. 30, 2025, Lipps was extradited to Cass County. Upon arrival, Lipps obtained a criminal defense attorney, Jay Greenwood.
In Fargo, Lipps was held in custody for two months while facing four counts of unauthorized use of personal identifying information and four counts of theft, according to Greenwood.
According to Greenwood, Lipps claimed she had never set foot in the state of North Dakota prior to being transported there by law enforcement.
“We kind of had a discussion as to, ‘I’ve never been in North Dakota before, this is the first time I’ve ever been on an airplane when they brought me here,’ and so, we needed to establish that kind of that alibi line of defense,” Greenwood told News Channel 11.
Greenwood added that he began investigating bank records to prove that Lipps was not in Fargo at the time the bank fraud crimes occurred.
“I kind of reached out to Lipps’ family to see if they could get me some bank records just to show whether or not she was ever here, whether she was using her debit card in Tennessee, and it showed that she had been,” Greenwood said. “I asked for records of a few months back, so I kind of wanted to know if she had been buying the same types of things at the same types of places for a few months, and that showed that, and I gave that information to the state attorney’s office.”
Upon submitting the evidence to the state attorney’s office, the case was dropped shortly before a scheduled preliminary hearing.
Fargo Police Department Chief David Zibolski acknowledged in a press conference on March 23 that it was a mistake by an AI recognition tool used by the West Fargo Police Department, which forwarded that information to the Fargo Police Department.
“Through their AI system, made that identification of Ms. Lipps and forwarded that information,” Zibolski said. “I would say it’s not an identification; it’s a potential suspect, but they forwarded that information to our detectives, who then assumed wrongly that they had also sent in the surveillance photos with that photo ID.”
Greenwood said fault also lies with the Fargo Police Department for not fully investigating the case before issuing a warrant for arrest.
“All I did was ask her family if she had ever left Tennessee, and they were pretty clear that she hadn’t, and then provided me information within about a week,” Greenwood said. “So it’s kind of split both ways. I get when people are going to use the tools that they have, you know, AI tools that they can use. But it can’t be the only tool. And they just left it at that. And this is what happens.”
Zibolski added in the news conference that the Fargo Police Department has issued a temporary directive and the department’s use of facial recognition technology is under review:
- The use of facial recognition technology to identify an unknown person shall only be utilized by members assigned to the criminal investigation division.
- Prior to the use of this technology, the member’s unit commander shall review the case and approve the use of facial recognition technology to assist in creating an investigative lead that may help to identify an unknown person.
- Once reviewed and approved for submission, department members shall only use bona fide status or federal entities to perform the search.
- Department members shall not use any other individual agency or department’s facial recognition AI system.
- All facial recognition identification submissions shall be tracked by the unit commander. The unit commander shall report the results of those submissions monthly to the CID Commander.
The Fargo Police Department is still actively searching for the fraud suspect.
MEDORA, N.D. — The Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library (TRPL) in Medora, North Dakota, is in its final stages of construction and is expected to finish in time for the grand opening on July 4.
Roughly 100,000 square feet and sitting on 93 acres outside of Medora, the TRPL has been under construction since the summer of 2023. It has been a long journey for the TRPL team to get where they are now. Getting the project off the ground has involved many steps throughout the years: choosing architecture firm Snøhetta in 2020 to design the library, getting approval from Congress later that year to acquire the land and finalizing the purchase in 2022. The library is expected to be finished no earlier and no later than the current deadline.
“We will be squeaking into the deadline,” said Jenn Carroll, director of facilities, grounds and sustainability at the TRPL. “We’ll be working right up until the very end.”
Construction of the library is almost complete with workers already starting to polish the floors to the entrance of the TRPL’s west building. The library will be split into two halves: an east building and a west building connected together by a roof. The east building will house the employee offices, classrooms for visiting students on field trips, and an auditorium that meets all the requirements to host a presidential debate. The TRPL team hopes that a presidential debate will take place there in 2028, but until then they’re excited to invite children from across the state to visit.
“We have a goal of getting every fourth grader in North Dakota out to visit the library,” said Marcie Woehl, manager of public programs and education at the TRPL.
Dorvall Bedford / The Dickinson Press
The west building will be where the museum portion of the library will be. Part of the space will be a more traditional exhibit section detailing former president Theodore Roosevelt’s life along with experiential galleries meant to immerse visitors in specific moments. The latter will include a full-scale model of Elkhorn Ranch to recreate his time in the Badlands and an obstacle course for visiting children to represent how the children living in the White House at the time turned the attic into their own little playroom.
One of the most important rooms of the museum will be the one showing the reason why Roosevelt decided to live in the Badlands. In a dark room where nothing else is displayed, visitors will be able to see the journal that Roosevelt kept and the entry he wrote the day that both his mother and wife died. Having been kept away from the public at the Library of Congress, this will be the first time the journal has ever been on public display.
Woehl said that she’s looking forward to that room specifically.
“That’s definitely one of my favorite components because it’s so representative of T.R.,” she said. “It recreates the feelings he was working through.”
Roosevelt’s journal will be one of many artifacts that the library is gathering from organizations such as the Smithsonian, Library of Congress, and National Park Service. Yet, the TRPL will not only be important for its role in teaching history. The TRPL team has emphasized that they want the library to be sustainable and make a contribution to preserving the environment. Above the parking lot are canopies with solar panels and below are geothermal wells. Together, they produce more energy than the library will need to function, allowing the TRPL to feed extra electricity back into the grid.
Dorvall Bedford / The Dickinson Press
Even the roof will contribute to preserving the environment. The library will have a walk-able green roof planted with native flora, which involved six years of people gathering the plants and propagating the seeds, according to JE Dunn Construction vice president Marc Mellmer.
Preserving the Badlands is something that the TRPL team takes pride in.
“It’s going to be one of those places that is breathtaking to be at when all of this is in bloom in the summer,” Marcie Woehl said. “We’re really doing whatever we can to create a better environment across western North Dakota.”
While JE Dunn, a construction company headquartered in Missouri, has been leading the TRPL’s construction, the creation of the library has involved the partnership of other companies local to North Dakota. Among the many contributors include West Dakota Oil, Roughrider Electric Cooperative, Prairie Lumber Company and Dickinson Ready Mix. Mellmer, a Dickinson-native, said it was necessary for JE Dunn to work with local companies since it’s not viable for a single company to dig, pour concrete, do the roofing and accomplish everything else by itself.
“Those days are really gone — almost completely,” Mellmer said. “No construction companies are coming in and doing all of that work themselves anymore.”
“Our pitch to all of the contractors was ‘this is your opportunity to create history,’” Mellmer added. “This is our legacy that will live on for generations to come, and we got to be a part of it.“
Dorvall Bedford / The Dickinson Press
But creating history is no easy task, Mellmer realized. Working on top of the plateau, construction workers had to deal with wind, rain, mud, snow, extreme cold and extreme heat. Mellmer worried about the construction every day since the start.
“It’s like you’re building a jewel box in one of the roughest conditions you possibly can,” Mellmer said.
The TRPL team sees the library as an opportunity to bring more traffic to Medora and attention to the region. While Medora might be one of the most popular tourist destinations in North Dakota in the summer, most stores close down in the winter and the town becomes quiet. The TRPL is expected to be a place people can visit in Medora year-round, providing new jobs, a place to eat, and educational opportunities.
“Our vision is that we would have people visiting from around the world,” Carroll said. “We hope to really be an asset to the community moving forward.”
“It’s going to be life changing for so many people,” Woehl added.
With the TRPL nearly reaching completion, staff are looking forward to working in their offices soon. According to sustainability coordinator Addison Olson, the team has worked in trailers and even in a local restaurant over the years. She said: “We’re excited to have our home base finally.”
Woehl, who has been part of the team since September and has been watching the project since 2014, is excited that the countdown to the grand opening is now in the double digits. She’s proud to have played a part in the building of something that she believes will last centuries.
“What a gift, what an honor, it’s so cool,” Woehl said. “How often do you get that privilege in your lifetime?”
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