The calls came into Arizona Native’s election protection hotline around 6 a.m. on Election Day.
Voters in Apache County, where a significant portion of the population is Diné, also known as Navajo, saw problems at the ballot box. One location was locked down and several others had problems printing ballots, according to an affidavit filed in state court. As the day went on, voters reported waiting for hours and observers reported people leaving. A local judge would ultimately agree to extend voting in nine districts across the province by two hours.
“From what we could see and from our people, it was just a mess,” said Jaynie Parrish, executive director of Arizona Native Vote, a nonprofit civic engagement organization focused on Native communities.
While delays in opening polls and problems leading to long lines are not uncommon, they can be especially acute in Indigenous communities, where voters must travel hours to get to the polls and face other unique barriers, such as non- traditional addresses and language access. problems. Taken together, these barriers result in a significant gap between turnout among those who live in tribal areas and those who subsist on them, according to a new study from the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonprofit that studies voting rights and elections.
What is most difficult to comprehend is that so many people are being left out of what is a fundamental right for all Americans
Chelsea Jones
“There are systemic issues that are keeping Native people from going to the polls — some intentionally,” said Samantha Blencke, a staff attorney at the Native American Rights Fund, which had polls in six states this election. For a voter who travels a long distance to cast their ballot, a polling place that doesn’t open on time can make a big difference, she said. “That’s it,” she said. “That’s their only chance to vote.”
Native American voters are an influential voting bloc in Arizona, where they make up 5% of the population. Both Republicans and Democrats have courted Native voters this year. Election results analyzed by the New York Times showed that Donald Trump made gains in many counties where Native Americans make up the majority of the population.
In addition to long commute times, Indigenous voters also face a litany of unique hurdles. Many lack traditional addresses, making it more difficult to vote by mail. Tribal identity cards can be rejected at the ballot box. And there can be significant problems translating ballots into native languages.
According to the Brennan Center study, between 2012 and 2022, turnout among those living on tribal lands was, on average, 11 points lower than turnout among people living on them. In the presidential elections the difference was 15 points.
Tribal nations with the highest shares of Native voters also had the lowest voter turnout rates, the study found. And those living on tribal lands were also less likely to use mail-in voting than those living on it.
“These findings demonstrate that Native Americans living on tribal lands are uniquely disenfranchised and demobilized from participating in federal elections,” the report said.
This year, after Election Day, Navajo voters filed another lawsuit against Apache County. Arizona is giving voters five days after Election Day to address any issues with mail-in ballots. But county officials had delayed disclosing the number of voters who had problems with their ballots until two days before the deadline, the lawsuit said. With just two days to go, they reported that there were 182 people who needed to recover their ballots, prompting an effort to contact them.
A judge denied the request after elections officials said they had made a reasonable effort to contact anyone at risk of having their ballot rejected.
Leonard Gorman, executive director of the Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission, has been concerned for years about the way ballots are translated into Navajo. Translation is required under the Voting Rights Act, and accurately describing issues like ballot measures on abortion and fentanyl can be extremely challenging, Votebeat reported earlier this year. Navajo has historically been an oral language, and translators are coming up with audio that those who don’t speak English can listen to at the polls, according to Votebeat.
Gorman said he has heard glitches and poorly worded audio over the years. And when he showed up at a polling place in Apache County in late October, the machine offering the audio translation wasn’t working, he said.
“It only said in literal translation or interpretation: ‘If you want to listen to the vote, press any button,’” he said. When he pressed a button, the instruction simply repeated itself. “That was the worst experience I ever had.”
Related: This Diné leader uses horses to bring ‘the largest indigenous turnout ever’ to the polls
Apache County election officials did not respond to an interview request.
Chelsea Jones, a researcher at the Brennan Center and co-author of the nonprofit’s study, said the findings show that people living on tribal lands face unique barriers that have so far gone unaddressed by federal law . A piece of legislation, the Native American Voting Rights Act, that would address many of the systemic challenges facing Native voters has stalled in Congress.
“Each of these common ways that we participate in elections actually creates layers of barriers for people living on tribal lands,” Jones said. “Each of these numbers represents hundreds of thousands of people who cannot or find it more difficult to participate. And that is what is hardest for us to understand: that so many people are being left out of what is a fundamental right for all Americans.”
