Rigged
How Native Americans are denied their right to vote
All citizens should have equal mail service for fair voting by mail. Thousands of Native Americans are denied their right to vote by the poor mail services on Reservations that makes it harder for them to get their Vote by Mail ballots and return them in time to be counted. This voter suppression must stop.
Navajo Nation
The Navajo Nation is the largest reservation in America. It spans almost 16,000 square miles across Arizona, Utah and New Mexico.
It has a poverty rate of 38% - twice that of the rest of Arizona. One in five of the residents live below the poverty threshold.
The reservation has over 10,000 miles of roads, of which 86 percent are unpaved. - Navajo Nation Tribal Transportation Plan
U.S. Postal Services are limited in Indian Country because of the poor quality of the road systems and many of the roads being unnamed. Many reservation residents do not have a traditional street address. This makes it hard for them to get Vote By Mail ballots and mail them back.
"Public transportation on the Navajo Nation is minimal and access to a vehicle is crucial.
In addition to the time and travel distance required to get to a post office, there is the added financial burden of fuel or the expense of paying someone to take them to the post office or postal provider." - NARF
Quality of postal service restricts the ability to vote
The Navajo Nation has just eleven post offices and fifteen postal provider offices.
Compare this to the rural state of West Virginia, which is much smaller in size but has 725 post offices and postal provider sites.
Several Navajo Nation citizens and Four Directions have concerns about the U. S. Postal Service. They have asked an Arizona court to ensure their ballots will still be counted in the November Election, even if delivered late. This would bring Arizona’s mail-in voting requirements in line with a dozen other states.
"Native Americans would prefer to vote in-person, but the pandemic has thrown many voters on reservations for a loop this year, particularly in the hard-hit Navajo Nation. Navajo Nation citizens face a multitude of hardships when it comes to voting by mail", said OJ Semans Sr. Co-Executive Director of Four Directions.
"Many on the reservation don’t have traditional addresses and mailboxes, going to the nearest post office is difficult because there’s only one for every 707 square miles on the reservation, and less than one-third of tribal households own a car."
"Some rural post offices -- which are often the closest to Native American reservations -- are only open during limited hours. The shortened operating hours put more constraints on when and how communities are able to send and receive mail." - Natalie Landreth, a senior staff attorney with Native American Rights Fund on ABC News .
Scottsdale, Arizona
Scottsdale by itself has twelve Post Offices as compared to 26 for all of Navajo Nation. The adjacent Salt River Pima - Maricopa Indian Community has none.
Arizona Indian Tribal Post Offices
The unequal mail service makes it easy for voters in urban areas to vote by mail while making it much harder for Native Americans on reservations and tribal lands.
Unequal voting access
Trump's Plan to Sabotage the Post Office Before the Election: A Closer Look
Postal service changes pose a threat to voting.
"New policies at USPS could disenfranchise voters. The concern is not only that you’re doing this in a pandemic, but a couple of months before an election with enormous consequences,” said Ron Stroman, who stepped down as deputy postmaster general this year. “If you can’t right the ship, if you can’t correct these fast enough, the consequence is not just, OK, people don’t get their mail, it’s that you disenfranchise people." - The Guardian
Trump reveals why he resists funding US postal service
USPS Purposefully Slowing Mail To Help Reelect Trump
"U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a political ally to U.S. President Donald Trump, ordered Postal Service carriers to "slow the mail down" to help Trump win the 2020 presidential election.
DeJoy was among his state’s top donors to Trump (see below for The Charlotte Observer’s list that ranks DeJoy at No. 3 with a total contribution of $111,000).
In addition to his contributions to Trump’s political campaigns specifically, DeJoy has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican causes or campaigns over decades." - SNOPES
Fair voting appeal
"Navajo Nation residents have 40 to 70 percent fewer days to cast their ballots after they receive them than other non-Indian Arizona voters. Data compiled by Four Directions shows that many Navajo Nation citizens who request an absentee ballot on October 23 (which is their right under Arizona law) will not receive it in time to consider, mark, and mail it back, and have it in the possession of the county recorder’s office by 7:00 pm on Election Day, as per the current law."
“Navajo Nation Members using the postal provider in Dinnehotso, Ariz. Certified first-class mail takes 10 days (20 days roundtrip) to reach the county recorder’s office. Secretary Hobbs has said that Arizona voters have 27 days to vote by mail. Native voters using the Dinnehotso location, have only seven days to consider, mark, and return their ballot via the mail if they requested a ballot prior to October 7,” said OJ Semans, Executive Director, Four Directions - Native News Online
AZ Secretary of State Katie Hobbs
Affording extra days to count ballots from tribal residents is “really just a common sense request,” said Semans. "Hobbs could choose to expand that decision to all Arizona residents if people are concerned it gives Navajo voters an “advantage.”
"The group wants a federal judge to require Arizona election officials to count ballots delivered up to 10 days after Election Day as long as the ballots come from tribal members living on reservations and are postmarked on or before the day of the election." - Arizona Central
"The tribe alleged that Arizona’s deadline violates the Voting Rights Act, the Arizona Constitution and tribal members’ constitutional rights to equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment." - The Daily Cable
Navajo Nation appeals for fair voting rights
The case: Yazzie v. Hobbs (2020)
"Native Americans face obstacles when making choices about feeding their families or expending resources that might affect their right to vote. This could include renewing their P.O. box, replacing an ID to update a residential address, or driving a considerable distance to register to vote or vote.
Non-Hispanic whites are 350 percent more likely to have mail delivered to their homes than Native Americans in Arizona. The difficulties accessing mail make voting by mail difficult because traveling to the P.O. box to pick up your ballot and then returning it can be an all-day task; without a car, it may be impossible.
Legislation suppressing the right to vote purports to be neutral; however, in many instances it undermines the most basic right to participate in our democracy. The loss of the right to vote is the loss of a voice in the democratic process. We should do more to ensure that all Americans, including Native Americans, can exercise this right easily and with undue hardship."
