Native vote set to swing election, again, in Arizona
“You’re under the ward of [the] government.”
This is how Maricopa County Recorder Roger Laveen explained to Frank Harrison and Harry Austin, members of the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation, why he wouldn’t register them to vote.
Harrison and Austin had recently returned to Arizona after serving in World War II. Like many veterans of the era, they believed they had earned the right to vote after having served honorably. They challenged Laveen’s decision, and in a 1948 landmark case, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled in favor of Harrison and Austin, recognizing that they, indeed, had the right to vote in Arizona. (Sadly, 20 years before, Peter Porter and Rudolph Johnson, both members of the Gila River Indian Community, lost their case before the same court when they were denied the right to vote in Pinal County.)
Austin and Harrison have voted in every presidential election since.
Native people across Arizona recognize Austin and Harrison’s struggle to gain the right to vote. And this is why tribal leaders and elders in Arizona stress the importance of voting. The emphasis on voting in tribal communities has transformed the Native voting bloc into a powerful one — so powerful that in states like Arizona, the Native vote swings state elections.
In 2002, the Native vote was widely credited with electing Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, giving Arizona its first Democratic governor in 25 years. Napolitano won by 2,200 votes, and at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, she told the crowd that “without the Native Americans, I wouldn’t be standing here today.”
A number of other elected officials in Arizona attribute their victories to the Native vote, including former Republican Congressman Rick Renzi, who built solid relationships in tribal communities, and was regularly endorsed by a number of Arizona tribes.
The Native vote swings elections in other states as well. In 1998, former Nevada Senator Harry Reid won reelection by just 428 votes, the closest margin in Nevada’s history. Native organizers point out that their tireless work in tribal communities is what gave Reid the edge.
Despite this, Native people across the United States often face steep hurdles to voting. Most tribal communities are located in rural areas, where polling places are few and far between. To vote, many people living on tribal reservations have to travel dozens, if not hundreds of miles to the nearest polling location.
Mail-in voting has been touted as a solution to this issue, but even this presents a different set of challenges. Many homes on tribal reservations do not have postal addresses; most residents use P.O. boxes, with the nearest post office located miles away. For example, on the Navajo Nation, a reservation the size of West Virginia, mail can travel as many as 244 miles farther than mail posted off-reservation. First-class mail sent to another city or town in Arizona can take up to 10 days to reach its final destination.
In recent years, voting rights activists and tribal governments have addressed these barriers. This year, a group of Navajo Nation citizens filed a lawsuit to extend the vote count in Arizona, claiming that the requirement that mail-in ballots be received, rather than postmarked on Election Day violates their constitutional voting rights.
The Trump campaign, along with the Arizona Republican Party, filed a motion to block the lawsuit. Eventually, the Ninth Circuit dismissed the case. Arizona will keep its strict ballot receipt deadline. Ballots must be received by 7 p.m. on election day to be counted.
These legal battles are not new to Native people in Arizona. Arizona tribal members have brought numerous legal challenges against the state over the years due to voter disenfranchisement measures. In 2006, Agnes Laughter, a member of the Navajo Nation, challenged the state’s proof-of-citizenship voter I.D. law when she was denied a state I.D. because she lacked an Arizona birth certificate.
In 2018, the Navajo Nation sued three Arizona counties, asserting that the lack of Navajo translators, the disallowance of Navajo voters to “cure” their ballots and the shortage of both voting registration sites and early voting locations amounted to voter discrimination.
Just three weeks ago, the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would review Arizona's law banning early ballot collecting. Tribal advocates applauded the Ninth Circuit Court's ruling, which concluded that Arizona's ban on early ballot collecting was enacted with "discriminatory intent" and, therefore, had a discriminatory impact on American Indian, Latino and Black voters in Arizona, in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
Arizona’s long history of voter discrimination and disenfranchisement had the state singled out for preclearance under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. However, in 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court gave states like Arizona a federal “bailout,” and allowed them to be cleared from the list. Following that decision, the Arizona legislature instituted restrictive voting measures that once again negatively impacted tribal voters.
In Southern Arizona, a high-profile battle over Native voter suppression has taken place for the past two years, sparked by Pima County Recorder F. Ann Rodriguez’s decision to remove the early voting site located on the Pascua Yaqui Reservation. Since that time, the Pascua Yaqui Tribe has attempted to restore the early voting site, but to no avail. Rodriguez, a Democrat who announced her retirement last year, has simply refused to restore the early voting site.
This year, the Pascua Yaqui Tribe sued Rodriguez in federal court, and just days ago, the court ruled in her favor. Danielle Lang, an attorney representing the Pascua Yaqui Tribe said, “Single handedly, Recorder Rodriguez has violated the Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution.”
This year, during one of the most important elections of our time, Arizona is the focus of increased national attention. Most political analysts view Arizona as a swing state that is critical to the success of either presidential candidate.
In spite of the serious challenges posed by the pandemic, the Northeastern Arizona Native Democrats are working hard to get out the Native vote. In addition to their grassroots organizing campaign, they recently released a series of videos, with appearances by professional golfer and Navajo Nation member Notah Begay III, as well as movie star Danny Trejo
Conversely, Navajo Nation Vice President Myron Lizer, a Republican, is set to welcome the Trump campaign to the Navajo Nation in the coming days.
Given Arizona’s voting history, both major parties know that the Native vote may well have the final say in this election.