So Republicans are against oil workers voting?
Perhaps I could explain this better. Bear with me.
When my folks came to ND after being in another state, my Pop faced public (though somewhat low level) criticism for being hired where he worked because he was not a "native North Dakotan." Some of my best friends from Arizona or other states likewise faced similar reactions (in their case it was not aired in public mediums, but rather in neighborhoods and schools) because they "weren't from around here."
North Dakotans, although constantly teased nationally, have a unique sense of pride. This turns us rather conservative toward outsiders. It sometimes reaches xenophobic levels. So when the oil boom hit, you have had two different
conservative reactions. First, pro-business Republicans loved the boom because of what it was doing for the state economy after decades of bad news (young people moving out, old people remaining and dying, low job opportunities, etc.). However, you also had many of those who despised what the boom had done, not just to the surrounding environment (North Dakotans aren't exactly coastal suburban types who latch onto alternative energy and environmentalism-they just tend to do things like wind power because it makes sense to them) but also to the operation of daily small town central and eastern North Dakotan life. Traffic increased, our roads were not up to par, housing prices skyrocketed, litter and piss was strewn all over our highway system, crime increased, our local women have felt unsafe, and so on. The image of the boom has flipped between prosperity and small town Grandma and Grandpa being unable to live in town, despite living there for generations. North Dakota life has more or less flipped with the boom, and many folks don't like it and want some measure of the past to come back, and it has been pretty popular in our town presses to look at it that way. A lot of North Dakotans quite simply do not like people from Arizona, California, Michigan, Virginia, and so on and don't want them to determine what goes on in the state anymore than they already do.
Before the rise of the national Tea Party, I had not heard a single peep about changing Voter ID laws in the State. It was never something seriously considered before, and we had (and still largely do) a lax voting system, along with a Republican-dominated legislature and executive branch. The Tea Party is so strange here that even though we have a Tea Party group, they aren't all that powerful of a force in our politics. It's mostly folks in North Dakota who are sympathetic with the Tea Party cause around the country, but aren't quite really needing to press hard about what's going on in this state. Sure they fire up a storm every once in a while about how we are too comfortable with big government (well, they tend to not discuss the
actual socialism in our state which has historically benefited farmers and other groups which tend to support the Tea Party), but I have to tell you, I can't quite figure out what other angst there is besides fashion and the side-effects of the boom.