Vote-by-mail systems could offer challenges for Native Americans
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
As the coronavirus has ravaged the country, killing 100,000 Americans and leaving 40 million without jobs, states are beginning to consider voting by mail as a safer alternative to in-person voting.
However, while voting by mail may make it easier for some voters to cast their ballots, it isn't a universal solution. For Native Americans living on reservations, implementing vote-by-mail policies could actually create barriers to voting.
Many Native Americans living on reservations have "nontraditional addresses," meaning that they do not receive mail to their houses but instead get it from a P.O. box. Natalie Landreth, senior staff attorney for the Native American Rights Fund , said that it was more likely for people living on tribal lands to have "descriptive addresses" like "last house on the left," instead of a specific address like "123 Main Street."
But having a P.O. box still creates barriers. Many Native Americans share their P.O. boxes with other people, and the boxes are located in post offices which could be several miles from their homes. Checking their mail therefore often requires time, money, and transportation, making it difficult to receive an absentee ballot. Some states, like North Dakota, do not consider P.O. boxes to be valid addresses, meaning that Native Americans who only have a P.O. box would not be able to register to vote.
Housing instability is common on tribal lands, with people couch-surfing or living in multigenerational households. High levels of poverty also make it difficult for Native Americans to vote. Sending in a ballot can sometimes require postage, meaning that the voter will have to pay for stamps, not to mention transportation to a post office.
Furthermore, an absentee ballot is often only considered if it is postmarked by a certain date, and this poses another obstacle for Native Americans. Often, ballots sent from reservations are not postmarked at the nearest post office, but are routed through major post offices and postmarked there. Landreth, who is based in Alaska, said that ballots mailed from Native communities in Alaska are actually postmarked several days later in the larger city of Fairbanks, meaning that their ballots may be postmarked too late for them to count.
"The whole scenario of vote-by-mail is cost upon cost upon cost," Landreth said.
Patty Ferguson-Bohnee, the director of the Indian Legal Clinic at Arizona State University, also noted that many Native Americans also aren't fluent in English, and cannot get language assistance through the mail.
"If you're trying to move to vote by mail, there are going to be people who are illiterate, people who don't speak the language, people who need assistance," Ferguson-Bohnee said.
In 2018, the Navajo Nation sued the state of Arizona and several counties for making it difficult for reservation members to cast early ballots by not providing language assistance and by refusing to give residents time after the election to fix early ballots where the envelope was not signed or a signature did not match. Ferguson-Bohnee, who represented the Navajo Nation in this case, said that over 100 ballots were not counted because of these restrictions.
The Navajo Nation settled its lawsuit with the state and counties in the fall. The Arizona secretary of state agreed to include protections in the 2019 draft Elections Procedures Manual to allow for Native American voters to correct missing signatures on their ballots within five days for a federal election, and within three days for any other election. While the state attorney general initially signed off on this language, he later rejected the provision, the Arizona Republic reported.
States that have entirely moved to vote-by-mail systems, like Utah, usually have polling locations where people can cast their ballots in person if necessary. However, the Navajo Nation sued San Juan County in Utah in 2016 after all but one polling station was closed, arguing that a mail-only system violated the Voting Rights Act.
The two parties reached a settlement in 2018, with the county agreeing to instate tribal accessible polling places and language assistance for Navajo speakers. But Ferguson-Bohnee noted that litigation comes at a high cost, and court processes are often lengthy.
She also argued that every reservation should have polling places, and that state and local leaders should consult with tribal leaders before making any final decisions about vote-by-mail.
"Often the people who are making the laws are not having conversations or are ignorant of what's happening," Ferguson-Bohnee said.
Washington state could be a model for the rest of the country to improve access to the physical ballot box for Native Americans while being a primarily vote-by-mail state. Last year, Washington Governor Jay Inslee signed the Native American Voting Rights Act, which allows for Native Americans to use nontraditional addresses or a building designated by the tribe as its address for the residential address portion of a voter registration form.
Fawn Sharp, who is the president of the National Congress of American Indians and the president of the Quinault Indian Nation in Taholah, Washington, said that these tribally designated buildings can serve as a place where reservation residents can pick up and drop off their ballots, and even receive "I voted" stickers.
Sharp said having a tribally designated building was "convenient" for the Quinault reservation, which is a large tribal community with over 200,000 acres of land.
"It's just a way that centralizes our voting, and that one recommendation can remove many of the barriers that we have facing Indian country," Sharp said about using this kind of building.
Sharp also said that there was a problem with "apathy" in tribal communities, since there are so many barriers to voting that Native Americans believe their voices will not be heard. She said that designated buildings could be a step in building trust in the community over time, once they're established as reliable institutions.
"Every tribe is deeply affected by the barriers. No one tribe is immune from the ability to access and fully express our voice," Sharp said. "And for tribal nations it's a very powerful collective voice, but to quite a degree it's muted because of these barriers and challenges."
Landreth urged jurisdictions not to "jump to conclusions" about the efficacy of vote-by-mail.
"You may be disenfranchising key segments of your population," Landreth said.
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Plus, right now, there are three states being sued for violating voting rights/access to Native American people. There are other states who are in the wings waiting for their suits.
Will historically acceptable 'in-person" voting be banned or remain as an alternative? If it's not banned, what is the problem? Would that not still be as it always was?
Each state is going to be hard pressed to force all voting to a mail-in ballot and still provide access for all people within the state boundary. I never saw that as feasible for the 2020 election, just not enough time to get the laws passed and the system set up to handle it. I think it's something that should be worked towards but there will be difficulties to handle and I would expect that each state will have something unique within their boundaries to add an interesting twist. Perhaps it could be active by the 2024 election but given the speed most states operate I wouldn't expect it in all 50 before 2032.
And to be honest, I would think there are more pressing issues on tribal lands than this. Hell, I don't know the percentage of homes on the Navajo reservation that have running water but I would expect it to be low. I would think that basic issues would be more important than getting up a vote-by-mail system but too many people want to rule by emotion and the current emotion is vote by mail to save lives. Just read a story from a hospital in Pittsburg where they are thinking the Covid-19 virus is becoming less virulent as fewer people are getting very sick or needing special measures. It's possible that the need to vote by mail will be more reduced by the time of the election, nobody really knows. But hey, the emotional way to govern. It's the American way... geeze
NO ONE IS FORCING MAIL IN BALLOTS.
yeah, ok . Poor choice of words on my part. it's not being forced. but there are democrats who are trying to push for a federal mandate for mail-in balloting for the upcoming election. and no reason to yell
'but there are democrats who are trying to push for a federal mandate for mail-in balloting for the upcoming election'
I think it's a good idea what with Co-Vid 19 and all. It makes good sense.
Oh wait . . . .
the whole idea is DOA
any bill like that would never get through the senate or get signed by the president.
besides that,
the feds cant just "mandate" states change their election process. simply not going to happen.
there will be no changes in our elections because of this virus.
That's why I asked 1st below if the Feds ran the elections on tribal lands. I always thought that the states ran the elections within their borders, so any changes to the voting process would need to be mandated by the states themselves.If I'm wrong about who manages the elections on tribal land I would love to know.
And with only 5 months until the election I really didn't think there was enough time to even attempt any changes to the process. And I don't think states are going to have the funding to make changes to the election. This shutdown has greatly impacted revenues which they are going to have to make up. And i don't agree with them just going to the Feds for more money, that money isn't free. We've already put so much debt on our grandchildren ...
But 8, the process is already spelled out in the Voting Rights Act - which all states have to adhere too. They may make their requirements tougher, but never weaker.
While the United States Constitution does set parameters for the election of federal officials, state law, not federal, regulates most aspects of elections in the U.S., including primaries, the eligibility of voters (beyond the basic constitutional definition), the running of each state's electoral college, as well as the running of state and local elections. All elections—federal, state, and local—are administered by the individual states. [2]
the feds can not tell the states to change their current state election laws. ( this is not debatable. )
and trump would never sign such bs into law ( also not debatable )
so the chances of our elections laws changing any time soon are less than zero
With the current pandemic, the Feds are "seriously" looking at mail-in-ballots. Some states already use them. For a good many Native Americans, as the article shows, mail-in-ballots would curtail the amount of voting in Indian Country.
Do the Feds run elections in the nations? I thought all elections were managed by the states themselves?
but yes, reading the article shows how pushing to use mail-in ballots would be a huge problem. As the government has done such a wonderful job of setting up the basics like sanitation and running water, I'm confident that adding this little mail-in ballot issue would be a breeze... /s
Why would it be a huge problem?
It's really too bad you don't read what is posted in these seeds, as you have stated in the past. It clearly explains what the problem is. But, as you have stated before, you don't bother to read the seeds. And with that I think I'm back to not responding to you because you show you don't want to talk about these issues. You only seem to want to deflect and snipe at people.
The Feds run the elections. For state/local elections, under the Voting Rights Act, the states/local communities must follow the guidelines as established in the Act.
I did some more research and I cannot find information to support that claim. As an example, the federal government does not have a formal voter ID law, but some states do and when voting in those states a tribal member must have valid ID. According to this site :
some states with voter ID laws often do not accept tribal IDs as a valid form of identification. This appears to be an ongoing issue in North Dakota for example.
Shortly after the 2018 elections, the Navajo Nation in AZ filed a lawsuit alleging that state and county polling procedures violated the Voting Rights Act. So the election was being managed by the local government, not the federal government. The local governments need to follow the Voting Rights Act, but the local governments run the elections to the understanding that I have. Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution gave states the responsibility of overseeing federal elections. Many Constitutional amendments and federal laws to protect voting rights have been passed since then, but nothing that I can find that moves the responsibility for federal elections to the federal level.
If I am wrong can you please point me to the correct information that shows the federal government runs the elections on tribal land.