Covering elections as a journalist on
the Navajo Nation can be challenging due to the sheer size of their
tribal land in Arizona. But what often gets lost is that Indigenous
voters face those same challenges — not to do their job, but to
participate in their own governance and have their voice heard.
The Arizona primary election was on
Tuesday, and as part of my job, I visited different polling locations to
see if any voters wanted to chat about the election. Spoiler: No one
wanted to, at least on the record.
I have always covered state elections
from the Navajo Nation in northern Arizona, and was struck this year by
just how difficult it was — and how different it is from driving to
multiple polling locations in Maricopa County.
On Tuesday, I spent the day driving
around the Navajo Nation and some parts of the Hopi Nation, stopping off
at polling locations in Navajo and Apache counties. By the end of the
day, I had spent nearly 10 hours in my car, driving more than 250 miles,
and visited only 10 polling locations. If I were in Maricopa County, I
would’ve hit 10 polling locations within a few hours and far fewer
miles.
There were over 230 polling places in Maricopa County Apache County had only 44, while Navajo County had just 39.
The Navajo Nation’s land mass on the
Arizona side spreads across Apache and Navajo counties and partially
into Coconino County. The Hopi Nation spreads into part of Coconino
County and across Navajo County.
I have voted at my local chapter
house in my community for a few election cycles now, and often voting
includes casting a ballot for tribal, state, and federal elections.
It really should not surprise me how
rural and spread out the polling locations are in this part of Arizona,
or that voter turnout during a primary election is dismal. But it still
does.
My family lives about 12 miles from
our Apache County polling location, and it takes at least 20 minutes to
get to the polls. The whole trip, including casting our ballots, can
take about an hour.
On average, the polling stations
within the Navajo Nation are about 20 to 30 miles apart, depending on
the part of the reservation you live in. But there are places where
people may have to drive up to an hour — one way — just to vote.
As I visited voting sites throughout
the day, I noticed a few things at each of them. Turnout was small: I
never got to a site and saw lines outside. At most, there were a handful
of voters coming and going at any time.
One election official at the Kin Dah
Lichii Chapter House told me that it was still early, and many voters
work for the tribe and won’t be let out until after 3 p.m. to go vote.
Polling locations in Arizona are open from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Voter turnout may increase later in
the day at polling locations in more populated areas of the Navajo
Nation, such as Window Rock or Chinle, though late-day surges of voters
often don’t materialize in the smaller polling locations in the more
rural parts of the reservation.
Another thing to note is that the
atmosphere at some voting locations is energetic, while others are
simply places to vote with no real interactions with others.
My dad used to tell me how he would
vote about an hour or two before the polls closed because he liked
socializing afterward. He’d sit at tables set up by local advocates,
enjoy a bowl of stew, and talk local politics with people from his
community.
That atmosphere can still be seen at
polling places across the Navajo Nation. At the Fort Defiance Chapter
House, an entire area is blocked off for voting advocates to set up in a
dirt parking area nearby.
When I stopped by around noon, there
were very few voters walking in and out of the chapter house, but
several canopies were set up where local advocates handed out soda,
water and food after voters finished.
One thing to note about the
supporters who set up on Election Day is that they are mostly for tribal
candidates, and very few are for state or federal candidates.
Driving from voting site to voting
site, I probably saw only a handful of campaign signs for state and
federal candidates. The many signs that covered the fences entering the
chapter houses or lined populated driving areas were predominantly
tribal candidates for local seats, such as the chapter president or
school board.
As you travel west on State Route 264
through Navajo County, you drive through part of the Hopi Nation. I am
familiar with the area and have visited the polling location on the Hopi
Nation before, but I learned that many people have no idea it’s even
there.
During a pit stop in Keams Canyon,
which is about 20 miles away from a Navajo County polling location on
the Hopi Nation, I wanted to make sure that there were no polling
locations in Keams Canyon itself, because it’s a small community.
I asked the gas station and
marketplace clerks if they knew where the polling site site was and if
they would vote in the Arizona primary election.
None of them knew it was Election Day
or where they could go to vote. The gas station clerk told me I had a
good chance of finding out that information from the nearby hospital.
A similar interaction occurred after visiting another Navajo County polling location at the Hardrock Chapter House.
I noticed an older Navajo man riding
his horse away from the chapter house, and I was curious if he had
finished voting and was maybe headed home.
I pulled up beside him in my car and
asked if he voted. He told me that he did not know it was Election Day,
but he’d be sure to visit the chapter house before polls closed to vote.
There are many communities in Arizona
where it’s hard to get people to vote and there are pointed efforts to
encourage voter turnout. However, not all communities in Arizona have
been denied their right to vote for over a century.
Indigenous people were not considered
citizens of the United States until 1924 —12 years after Arizona became
a state and about 60 years after it became a U.S. territory — and it
would take decades for many to gain access to the rights that are
supposed to coincide with citizenship, including voting.
Indigenous people in Arizona were not granted the right to vote until 1948.
Arizona has one of the largest Native voting populations in the country,
with more than 305,000 people of voting age, according to the National
Congress of American Indians. Indigenous people make up 6% of Arizona’s
overall population.
In 2020, I worked for the Arizona
Republic and wrote a piece highlighting how Indigenous communities
contributed to turning Arizona blue during Joe Biden’s historic win in
what had long been a reliably red state.
The story came from when I tweeted an observation
about the voting maps: how many of the voting precincts that turned
blue fell within the boundaries of tribal nations across Arizona.
In the 2020 general election, Native
voters cast more than 69,000 votes in six counties with large Indigenous
populations, and of those, about 52,000, or 75%, were cast for Biden. His margin in Arizona was just over 10,000 votes.
About an hour before the polls closed
on Tuesday, a voter advocate set up at Pinon Chapter House told me that
she saw roughly 400 voters come throughout the day and that advocates
are going to have to strategize more to get more voters during the
general election.
Statewide, voter turnout was a little over 26%, according to the unofficial election results from the Secretary of State.
We’re in the last leg of the 2024
election cycle, which includes a presidential election in November.
Candidates should pay more attention to Indigenous communities,
especially in Arizona, where its status as a battleground state means
races are likely to be decided by narrow margins.
After covering another Election Day
on the Navajo Nation, I want to note that voter education is drastically
needed within the community, and the main people providing that
education are the Native voting advocates who are on the ground talking
directly to their communities. One thing I’ve never seen are state or
federal campaign managers or advocates for candidates who are working to
engage Native voters while I am out covering Election Day.
Voting within Indigenous communities
is a grassroots movement led by people from their communities who care
and want to ensure that their community members understand what is on
the ballot this election season.