Cayla Nimmo/AP Photo
A voter shows her ‘I Voted’ sticker while waiting for the Navajo Nation presidential primary election results in 2018 in Window Rock, Arizona.
On the last Monday in October, Tara Benally woke up to the Navajo Nation’s first snowstorm of the season. Wary of black ice, the voting rights advocate crept along the quiet roads to the Ts’ah Bii Kin Chapter community, about two and a half hours north of Flagstaff. As the field director for the Utah Rural Project and its new Arizona branch, which both assist Native American voters, Benally travels to reservation voting locations like the Ts’ah Bii Kin Chapter to distribute election information and COVID-19 safety kits.
But this fall, the weather isn’t the only thing that might discourage tribal members from voting in the general election. State officials continue to resist, as they have for decades, improving voter accommodations for the Navajo.
In August, Navajo citizens sued Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs seeking an extension of the mail-in ballot period for the counties within the vast and isolated reservation. They argued that many people would not be able to meet the original deadline since they do not have home mail delivery and must travel to post offices to pick up and return their ballots. However, last month, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a district court ruling denying an extension.
Arizona has a long, ignominious history of erecting barriers to voting in Indian Country. The 1965 Voting Rights Act ended literacy tests, but some local election officials continued to use that tactic until Arizona finally outlawed them in 1972. Recent hurdles include the state’s 2004 Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act, a voter ID law that disproportionately affects Native voters who carry tribal IDs that poll workers sometimes reject.
Arizona has a long, ignominious history of erecting barriers to voting in Indian Country.
Voting by mail is not easy either. Many homes on the Navajo reservation lack residential addresses. Instead, tribal members must travel to one of the 11 post offices or postal-service providers to send or check their mail, a chore that sometimes requires a nearly 200-mile round trip: The reservation is roughly the same size as West Virginia and spans sections of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Moreover, 70 percent of people on the reservation speak only Navajo and require translation services if they plan to vote by mail.
According to Patty Ferguson-Bohnee, an Arizona State University professor who specializes in tribal and election law, Navajo officials in New Mexico counties have reported that they haven’t seen an increase in mail-in ballot requests this year as USPS delays have long been an issue for residents, even before this summer’s nationwide postal crisis.
Moreover, Navajo Nation has been hit hard by the pandemic. In May, the reservation had the highest number of COVID-19 deaths per capita in the country. Cases subsided during the summer, but have spiked again and tribal officials imposed a 56-hour lockdown and daily curfews from October 30 to November 2 across the reservation and urged people to “vote in person only if necessary.”
To add to the 2020 election season’s stresses, Navajo Nation is also holding elections for tribal offices and voters must file a separate request for a tribal election ballot. In some cases, depending on the availability of space and election dates, voting in tribal contests may take place in one location and voting for state and federal races in a different place.
While this setup can invite confusion, to get the word out, Benally’s team and other organizations post social media updates and distribute flyers to people without consistent access to the internet. The Arizona Native Vote Election Protection Project also provides hotlines staffed by Navajo speakers to ensure tribal voters have access to legal advice about their rights.
Both Joe Biden and Donald Trump are courting the Arizona Native vote in this battleground state, and each campaign has rolled out plans for Indian Country that honor the trust doctrine, the federal government’s pledge to support tribal self-determination and sovereignty. However, many tribal members believe that Washington has long neglected their issues and view both parties with equal measures of distrust and skepticism. “The federal government needs a facelift,” says Benally.
Getting a handle on the pandemic and promoting economic recovery are the top issues for most Navajo, and that means voting out Trump. If Biden wins, Navajo Nation wants his administration to move decisively to protect sacred sites from resource extraction; improve health care services; and meet transportation, water and electricity, and other infrastructure needs.
In the short term, most Navajo voters accept that casting a ballot sometimes means long drives on icy roads. The reforms that tribal officials and voting rights advocates would like to see for future elections include increased funding for translators, longer mail-in voting periods, and better voter education.
There are a few bright spots. This year, Utah’s San Juan County, where part of the reservation is located, expanded the number of in-person voting sites. And in Arizona, one young Navajo activist organizes trail rides on horseback to the polls as a way to honor Native voting rights pioneers and encourage tribal members to get out and vote early.
