PHOENIX – Members of the Navajo Nation are asking a federal judge to require the state to count mail-in ballots from voters on all the state’s reservations that are not received until after Election Day.
The lawsuit filed in federal court says a study of mail service on the remote reservation means that many tribal members who request early ballots won’t receive them on time to mark them and mail them back to county election offices to meet the deadline. So it asks that all ballots postmarked by 7 p.m. on Election Day from any reservation address be counted if they are received within 10 days of the election.
O.J. Semans, co-director of Four Directions, a Native American organization that helped craft the lawsuit, said state laws have to fall if they violate federal statutes and constitutional requirements. And that is exactly what a federal judge is being asked to rule here.
The issue comes down to a matter of time.
According to the lawsuit, it takes less than 18 hours for a certified first class letter sent from Scottsdale to get to the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office.
By contrast, it takes six days for a first class certified letter to make it from Pinon to the Navajo County Recorder’s Office in Holbrook.
It appears to be a problem, at least in part, to how the U.S. Postal Service handles rural mail.
Attorney Chris McClure said a piece of certified mail from Teec Nos Pos was tracked through Albuquerque to Flagstaff to Phoenix before winding up in St. Johns.
And even that requires that someone get to a post office in the first place.
All that, said Semans, goes to the legal question of whether Native Americans have equal access to voting opportunities, something he said is required under the law.
“For people in Scottsdale to go to the post office is like taking a round of golf,” he said. “People on the Navajo reservation, it’s running a marathon and a half over 38 miles in order to find a post office, if not more.”
Source: Arizona Daily Star; 8/27/20
