The calls started coming in to the Arizona Native vote election protection hotline around 6am on election day.
Voters in Apache county, where a sizable chunk of the population is Diné, also known as Navajo, were seeing problems at the polls. One location was locked and several others were having trouble printing ballots, according to an affidavit filed in state court. As the day went on, voters reported hours-long waits and observers reported that people were leaving. A local judge would eventually agree to extend voting in nine precincts in the county by two hours.
“It was just a mess from what we could tell and from our folks,” said Jaynie Parrish, the executive director of Arizona Native Vote, a nonprofit civic engagement organization focused on Native communities.
While delays in opening polling sites and glitches that lead to long lines are not uncommon, they can be particularly acute in Native communities, where voters can travel hours to get to the polls and face other unique barriers, like non-traditional addresses and language access issues. Taken together, those barriers result in a significant gap between turnout among those living on tribal lands and those who live off of them, according to a new study from the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonprofit that studies voting rights and elections.
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