Native Health Central has been holding outreach events in Phoenix over the past several weeks to get people registered to vote. (Photo courtesy of Native Health Central)
PHOENIX – The Indian Citizenship Act was signed into law in June 1924, granting Indigenous people born in the United States citizenship and paving the way to their right to vote. Although this was 100 years ago, today Indigenous people in Arizona still face many challenges when it comes to the electoral process at the federal, state and local levels.
It wasn’t until 1948, when the Arizona Supreme Court weighed in, that Indigenous people gained the right to vote in the state, though Native Americans still faced many suppression tactics. Even after the Voting Rights Act was passed by Congress in 1965, reinforcing Indigenous voting rights, English literacy tests were given as a requirement to vote until the 1970s.
Today, a new set of challenges has hindered civic engagement in Indigenous communities across the state. From hours of traveling to get to a polling station to trouble with addresses for mail-in ballots, there are a variety of complex issues at play.
In August, the Supreme Court ruled that Arizona could enforce a law requiring voters to show proof of citizenship when registering. The law was introduced in 2022 under Republican Gov. Doug Ducey but was struck down by the courts. The Republican National Committee along with the Arizona GOP lawmakers appealed the ruling, getting it overturned just months before the general election.
A month before this ruling, U.S. Rep. Joe Morelle, D-N.Y., and the U.S. Committee on House Administration released an extensive report highlighting the various voting challenges affecting Indigenous communities today.
“Native peoples continue to face substantial and unique barriers to equal participation in federal, state and local elections. My team prepared this report as part of our work to reconcile these harms,” Morelle said in a news release. “I will continue to work with my colleagues … to ensure equal access to representation for every Native person and that the right to vote is fully realized.”
U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-A.Z., is a ranking member of the House Subcommittee for Indigenous Peoples.
“I have met with and visited tribes across Arizona, and I have heard extensively about the many barriers to voting in Indian Country. … More work remains to be done, and that’s why this report comes in. I hope to see the issue it outlines addressed through policy and legislation soon,” Gallego said.
Ahead of the upcoming election, organizations across Arizona are ramping up efforts to register Indigenous voters and address voting challenges. (File photo by Franco LaTona/Cronkite News)
The report breaks down the main issues, including:
- Traveling extreme physical distances to access voting locations and services, often with unreliable transportation and poorly maintained roads.
- Lack of standard residential addresses on reservations and lack of accommodation for individuals using descriptive addresses.
- Insufficient mail service by the United States Postal Service.
- Voter identification laws that burden Indigenous voters.
- Insufficient language assistance.
- Electoral systems that dilute the voting strength of Indigenous communities.
Arizona organizations help with registration barriers ahead of deadline
Jaynie Parrish is the founder and director of Arizona Native Vote, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization working in tribal and rural communities to increase civic engagement and education. Her organization has been working over the past few weeks registering people to vote and educating them on the importance of the electoral process.
“Physical addressing is No. 1,” Parrish said. “We know how hard it is to have rural and tribal voters register to vote, be in touch with them, engage them, because we don’t have things like physical addressing across the board.”
Arizona Native Vote looking to assist in t all elections in the state of Arizona. “The county elections could always use more help in reaching voters, so we don’t mind helping where we’re needed,” Parrish said.
According to a report from the Native American Rights Fund, in the 2012 election the highest rate of rejected provisional ballots in Arizona came from Apache, Navajo and Coconino counties, where the vast majority of Arizona’s Indigenous population lives. Additionally, over 2,000 voters were placed on the suspended list in Apache County, primarily due to questions surrounding their residency.
“We want to keep people excited and inspired and interested in what civics does, and a lot of the heart piece is connecting voters to why all of this is important, that their vote really does make a difference, that their engagement really does matter, so that our democracy continues and that our democracy is fair and includes us,” Parrish said.
Arizona is home to 22 federally recognized tribes and Indigenous people make up 5.2% of the state’s population, making them a crucial voting bloc. In 2020, President Joe Biden won the state by just over 10,000 votes. There were over 60,000 votes cast from the Navajo Nation alone, a community that voted mostly Democrat, according to High Country News.
Legislation has been introduced over the years to help address Indigenous communities’ concerns.
Additionally, provisions were introduced in 1975 and reaffirmed in 2006 to the Voting Rights Act that require states to provide language assistance during elections for certain language minority groups that did not speak or understand English adequately enough. The provisions cover assistance for those who speak Asian, American Indian, Alaska Native and Spanish languages.
Introduced in 2021, the Native American Voting Rights Act addresses concerns with voting locations and services in rural communities, as well as giving tribes more oversight over election processes. It has not yet made its way to the House floor.
The Freedom to Vote Act passed the House in 2022 and would have given additional voting access and rights. It was supported by Indigenous communities as well as other minority groups. The bill was never brought to an official vote in the Senate.
Native Health Central in Phoenix, a part of the Indian Health Service (IHS), is a designated national voter registration site, the first such IHS site. Native Health Central has been holding a variety of outreach events to get Indigenous people registered to vote before the Oct. 7 deadline.
“We’ve been doing civic engagement for multiple election cycles,” said Susan Levy, the volunteers and community involvement coordinator at Native Health. “We already had a relationship with the Secretary of State’s Office, so we called them and worked with them and worked with the Department of Justice and IHS to become the first NVRA (National Voter Registration Act) in Indian Health Service around the country. … I think we did a really good job, and it’s been very successful.”
With the registration deadline and early voting rapidly approaching, civic engagement organizations will continue to provide support to Indigenous communities so that their voices are heard.
“Our work doesn’t start and stop with a campaign or election year,” Parrish said. “We’re going to be here even after Election Day, still doing the work that we do.”