< For Navajo Nation In Arizona, The Election Process Is Complicated And Problematic

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Voting in Indian Country is often problematic. If somebody at a voter registration site or polling place simply asks for a voter's address, they face the reality that many reservations do not have street addresses. Some officials in some states are now pushing for mail-in balloting to prevent the spread of the coronavirus this fall, and as Laurel Morales of member station KJZZ reports, that has made the election process for Native Americans even more complicated.

LAUREL MORALES, BYLINE: Tonalea, on the Navajo Nation in northeastern Arizona, is the hometown of Darrell Marks. His mother and grandmother still live there.

DARRELL MARKS: And that's about 5 miles of zigzagging down a dirt road to get to their residence.

MORALES: Marks says it's always been difficult for his family to get their mail. They rely on a PO box at the trading post.

MARKS: There was times she only checked it once or twice a month. And so I was very familiar, as a child growing up, seeing the, you know, past-due notices and things like that because my mom wasn't checking it regularly because there were other things that were a little bit more important.

MORALES: Things like hauling water, feeding the family and working a full-time job. Marks says if they miss the mail-in ballot deadline, the drop box is 100 hundred miles away in Flagstaff, and in November, dirt roads can become muddy and impassable.

JACQUELINE DE LEON: We saw time and time again that there were just unreasonable distances that people had to travel in order to cast their vote.

MORALES: Jacqueline De Leon is an attorney at the Native American Rights Fund and a member of the Isleta Pueblo. The fund recently held field hearings all over Indian Country to better understand the obstacles to voting that Native Americans face.

DE LEON: People rely on PO boxes, and they share PO boxes. I'm talking about, like, 10 to 15 people sharing a PO box.

MORALES: In Alaska, it's not unusual for the mail to be delayed if weather prevents planes from landing in remote villages. In Northern California, many Karuk tribal members live in RVs, which are considered temporary housing by election authorities. And in the Southwest, the Navajo Nation has sued over the lack of translators. Navajo isn't traditionally a written language, so there's no translation on a mail-in ballot, and De Leon says that's a major problem, given the push to vote by mail this election because of the COVID crisis.

DE LEON: Adoption of just mail-in balloting would be devastating in Indian Country.

MORALES: Another registration hurdle is Internet access. More than a third of Native Americans living on tribal land lack broadband, according to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. On the Navajo Nation, it's two-thirds of the population. As the tribe works to stop the spread of the coronavirus, no one is out trying to register people in person.

PATTY FERGUSON-BOHNEE: Those events are not happening right now.

MORALES: Patty Ferguson-Bohnee directs Arizona State University's Indian Legal Clinic.

FERGUSON-BOHNEE: You know, the tribes are not encouraging people to come onto the reservations right now because of the pandemic. So, you know, what are the alternative? Are there alternatives?

MORALES: Election officials have to get creative when it comes to registering and voting. Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs says voting early will be key. She points to one county that plans to use a mobile voting booth.

KATIE HOBBS: It was a food truck, and they converted it into a voting van. They can do curbside voting, where two of the poll workers from different parties come out and help the voter vote at their car.

MORALES: The problem now is spreading the word.

HOBBS: Those early-voting options don't do any good if we're not telling voters that they're there.

MORALES: Hobbs says the farther someone has to drive, especially if they don't have gas money, the less likely they are to vote.

For NPR News, I'm Laurel Morales in Flagstaff.

(SOUNDBITE OF WHALE FALL'S "THE APARTMENT")

Copyright © 2020 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.