While progressives have been pushing for increased access to vote by mail, making sure viable in-person voting options are available is a must for Native Americans, according to Tucker.
A key reason is that many speakers of Native languages with limited English may require language assistance to vote that they can’t get by mail, he said.
Mail-in voting is designed to benefit white, middle-class voters and can actually drive down participation by Native Americans if in-person voting becomes harder to access, according to O.J. Semans Sr., the executive director of Native voting rights group Four Directions and an enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, who chaired two of NARF’s field hearings.
Four Directions is currently backing a bid in Arizona to make sure Navajo Nation members’ votes are counted even if they fail to arrive by Election Day, as state law requires.
The group tested how long it typically takes for mail to arrive from different locations on the Navajo Nation, the largest reservation in the country, and discovered that it can take several days longer for mail to travel from those sites to county offices than from locations in urban areas — putting Navajo citizens’ votes at risk, Semans said.
The problem could be fixed by requiring the state to accept ballots postmarked by Election Day that are received within 10 days following the election, which “we thought was a no-brainer,” Semans said.
“We are thinking that this is happening everywhere in Indian Country — that they’re not given the same time frame in which to participate in an election as non-Indians,” he said. “We think we’re looking at the tip of the iceberg.”
Source: Law360; 9/1/20
