Going Postal: How All-Mail Voting Thwarts Navajo Voters
This article appeared on Rural America In These Times in 2015. For more on topics like this, see my book, American Apartheid: The Native American Struggle.... A ll-mail-in voting has arrived in the red-rock bluffs and canyons of San Juan County, Utah, which overlaps a portion of the Navajo Nation’s reservation. In 2014, the county sent voters mail-in ballots for the general election, while closing local precincts in the shadow of Red Mesa’s ruddy flat-topped butte; in Monument Valley, the fabled location for John Ford Westerns; and in other towns and hamlets. Just one polling place remained open, in the county seat, Monticello, in the predominantly white northern portion of the county. Also gone were 20-some election judges and translators who had provided voting help and federally mandated language assistance to non-English-speaking Navajos. One part-time official interpreter was left to cover about 8,000 square miles—an area nearly the size of Massachusetts. As states and c