An American flag with an image of Native American on it is attached to a fence outside a home on the Navajo Nation. Photo by Sam Wasson | Getty Images
BY: JEN FIFIELD/VOTEBEAT AND CARRIE LEVINE/VOTEBEAT – NOVEMBER 3, 2022 9:06 AM
On the day of the August primary election, Kee Allen Begay Jr. was at a polling place on the Navajo Nation when he overheard voters talking about how they had gone to the wrong polling place.
Begay said the voters were told that they had to vote at a different location 20 or so miles away, a trip they weren’t willing to make. Begay, an elected official for the tribe who lives in Apache County, has heard similar stories before.
This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.
Navajo Nation officials have been lobbying Apache County for a solution already adopted by many other Arizona counties — opening at least one vote center on the reservation where registered voters from anywhere in the county would be allowed to cast ballots. But they say they haven’t been able to persuade local election officials, despite offering resources to support the vote center. When other Arizona counties have switched to using vote centers, it has reduced the number of rejected ballots.
The complexity of mapping out reservation addresses; the crisscrossing county, precinct, and tribal community lines; and the lack of voter education on reservations, among other issues, create confusion for Navajo Nation voters in Arizona over where their assigned polling place is. It’s not always the closest or most intuitive location. Some who are told they are in the wrong place cast what’s called a provisional ballot, which is reviewed by officials before being counted to see whether the voter was in the right place after all. If the voter was wrong, their ballot is rejected.
