A14 SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2020
YDENNEHOTSO, Ariz. — Turn off the
two-lane highway that runs across the
Navajo Nation, just a few miles south of
the Utah border, and the pavement
yields instantly to the desert.
Drive slowly down an unmarked road,
rocking side to side over the sandstone,
and you will find the land where Darlene
Yazzie’s family has lived for more than a
century. It is quiet here, the late-summer
sun beating down on a wooden pergola, a
cat asleep against a tire in the shade of
Ms. Yazzie’s car. When she looks at the
news from outside the reservation, she
said, she feels lucky to live where she
does.
The trade-off is time. “Everything
takes time,” Ms. Yazzie said: hauling wa-
ter to drink, hauling hay for the sheep,
getting to the post office 10 miles away.
There are no mailboxes or mail carri-
ers in Dennehotso or any of the other
Navajo communities that dot the mesas
and scrublands of northeastern Arizona,
and an envelope sent from here to any-
where else in the state travels hundreds
of miles through Albuquerque and
Phoenix first. First-class mail can take 10
days to reach St. Johns, the county seat,
about 200 miles away.
In a year in which tens of millions of
people plan to vote absentee, in a state
that could decide both the presidency
and control of the Senate, this geo-
graphic isolation has more profound im-
plications than ever before. About 67,
eligible voters live in the Arizona portion
of the Navajo Nation, and President
Trump won the state in 2016 by just
91,000 votes.
Like many Americans living under the
coronavirus, Ms. Yazzie, 71, a retired
public health worker, voted by mail in Ar-
izona’s primary in August after years of
voting in person. Unlike many Ameri-
cans, she had to complete her ballot the
moment she received it — in the doorway
of the Dennehotso post office, which so-
cial-distancing rules forbade her to enter
— because taking it home might have
meant submitting it too late.
“My son got his ballot late because the
post office was closed for a while and we
couldn’t get the mail,” she said. “You
have to know which hours they’re open,
certain days they’re closed, and I didn’t
want to do that again. So I just turned
around and I filled it in.”
The challenges for voters here resem-
ble the challenges for Native American
voters on many reservations, but size
multiplies them. At more than 18,
square miles, the Arizona portion of the
Navajo Nation alone is larger than any
other reservation in the country. But it
has only 27 postal locations, some of
them open just three or four hours a day.
This is roughly equivalent to having 13
mailboxes in the entire state of New Jer-
sey.
When Four Directions, a Native Amer-
ican voting rights group, sent test mail-
ings this summer, it found no post office
on the reservation from which first-class
mail arrived at the appropriate county
recorder’s office in less than six days. By
comparison, it took less than 18 hours for
mail from Scottsdale, an affluent city out-
side Phoenix, to reach the Maricopa
County office.
These numbers are the basis for a law-
suit, in which Ms. Yazzie is the lead plain-
tiff, that Four Directions filed against the
Arizona secretary of state, Katie Hobbs,
to extend the deadline for counties to re-
ceive ballots from voters on the reserva-
tion. It argues that the state’s uniform
Nov. 3 deadline violates the Voting
Rights Act of 1965 by giving Navajo vot-
ers less opportunity to vote than other
Arizonans, and calls for ballots received
from the reservation by Nov. 13 to be
counted as long as they are postmarked
by Election Day.
A spokeswoman for Ms. Hobbs, a
Democrat, said that she would comply if
the court ordered an extension, but that
she had no authority to change the dead-
line because it is set by Arizona law. Her
office has given counties $1.5 million to
increase voting access for “tribal and ru-
ral communities,” distributed about
24,000 voter registration forms as in-
serts in Native American publications,
and run radio announcements in the
Navajo language.
Mr. Trump’s campaign opposes the
suit on the premise that giving voters on
the reservation more time would disad-
vantage voters off the reservation.
Both sides acknowledge that the impli-
cations are significant. A deadline exten-
sion, Mr. Trump’s lawyers said in oppos-
ing it, “would unquestionably affect the
share of votes that candidates in the
state of Arizona receive.”
While the Navajo Nation is not politi-
cally homogeneous — its president, Jon-
athan Nez, is a Democrat, while its vice
president, Myron Lizer, endorsed Mr.
Trump at the Republican National Con-
vention — it is much bluer than Arizona
as a whole. In 2016, when Mr. Trump won
by 3.5 percentage points statewide, Hil-
lary Clinton won by double digits on the
reservation.
A district court let the existing dead-
line stand, ruling that the plaintiffs had
not proved it affected them more than ru-
ral voters outside the reservation. Four
Directions appealed, arguing that the
plaintiffs needed only to demonstrate
that they had “less opportunities to par-
ticipate in the political process than
other Arizona citizens due to their race
or color,” not “to establish a difference
between the tribal members who are
part of a protected class of voters and
other non-Indian yet also ‘rural’ voters.”
On Thursday, the Court of Appeals for
the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district
court’s ruling, concluding that the plain-
tiffs lacked standing to sue because their
complaint discussed obstacles for voters
on the reservation at large but, the
judges said, did not establish that the
plaintiffs were personally affected.
There will almost certainly be further
litigation, but the trouble, once again, is
time: The ruling on Thursday effectively
guarantees that the deadline will remain
in place for this election.
The Navajo and their supporters in
other tribes were prepared for that possi-
bility, having spent the past few weeks
doing what Native Americans have long
done: organize on the assumption thatthe U.S. government will not help them.
Navajo leaders have used events to
distribute food and supplies, begun dur-
ing the pandemic, to encourage voter
registration as well. On one day in Sep-
tember, more than 500 families received
informational materials in the communi-
ties of Chilchinbito, Rough Rock and
Many Farms, Mr. Nez said.
Separately, a team led by Donna Se-
mans, the grass-roots organizing direc-
tor at Four Directions and a member of
the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, has spent
weeks training Navajo Nation residents
to register their neighbors.
Volunteers arrived at training sites
and, without leaving their cars, received
registration forms and personal protec-
tive equipment, including masks, gloves
and portable ultraviolet lights. They
worked in paid shifts and, within a
month, registered about 2,000 voters in
Tuba City, Kayenta and Window Rock.
But the biggest challenge is still ahead.
Many of these voters, plus thousandsmore across the reservation, are now re-
questing mail-in ballots — and while
there are several ways Arizonans can
submit ballots, none are easily accessible
on the reservation.
There is only one postal location per
681 square miles on the reservation,
compared with one per 15 square miles in
Scottsdale, according to an expert report
filed in the Yazzie v. Hobbs lawsuit by
Bret Healy, a consultant for Four Direc-
tions, and Jean Schroedel, a professor of
public policy at Claremont Graduate
University.
Early-voting sites accept mail ballots,
but there is only one per 1,532 square
miles on the reservation, compared with
one per 17 square miles in Scottsdale, the
report found. Election Day voting sites
are one per 306 square miles on the res-
ervation compared with one per 13
square miles in Scottsdale. And there are
few ballot drop boxes on the reservation,
even though Mr. Nez’s administration
has asked county officials to add more.Voters can also submit ballots at
county recorders’ offices, but there are
none on the reservation, which spreads
over three counties. The Coconino
County office, in Flagstaff, is about 80
miles from Tuba City, the county’s largest
on-reservation community. The Navajo
County office, in Holbrook, is more than
170 miles from its largest on-reservation
community, Kayenta. And the Apache
County office, in St. Johns, is more than
130 miles from its largest on-reservation
community, Chinle.
For Navajo voters, “There isn’t a sin-
gle ballot delivery system in Arizona that
is even close to equal,” Mr. Healy said.
“These aren’t geographical accidents —
why the postal sites are where they are
and that there are so few of them — and
it’s not an accident of geography where
the county seats are. That fundamental,
unequal access is a result of politics.”
In many states, outside groups would
be allowed to collect voters’ sealed bal-
lots and deliver them to the county re-
corders’ offices, but that is illegal in Ari-
zona. (The Court of Appeals for the Ninth
Circuit ruled that this ban violated the
Voting Rights Act in part because it dis-
proportionately affects Native Ameri-
cans, who face so many barriers to re-
turning their own ballots. But Republi-
cans appealed the case to the Supreme
Court, and it will not be resolved before
the election.)
In 2018, Four Directions hired hun-
dreds of Navajo Nation residents to drive
voters to and from the polls. It is plan-
ning a similar effort this year, as exten-
sive as its budget will allow. But the pan-
demic makes ride-sharing harder to or-
ganize safely, and the fact that so many
people are using mail ballots means
there will be demand for transportation
to more locations: drop boxes and early-
voting sites as well as traditional Elec-
tion Day precincts.
The protracted legal battles, too, have
made it hard to set strategies.
Arizona’s voter registration deadline
was originally Oct. 5, after which Four
Directions planned to turn to get-out-the-
vote efforts. Then the deadline was ex-
tended to Oct. 23, so they continued their
registration efforts instead. On Tuesday,
the deadline was cut back to Thursday.
“I’ve heard people say it’s not their
fault that we’re located where we’re lo-
cated, and it’s not — but this is where
they live, and they have just as much
right to vote as anybody else,” Ms. Se-
mans said. “All we’re trying to do is bring
equality like we were promised.”Where Life Moves Slower, and Mail-In Ballots Take Six Days
The 18,000-square mile Arizona
portion of the Navajo Nation has
27 postal sites for 67,000 voters.
By MAGGIE ASTORPHOTOGRAPHS BY SHARON CHISCHILLY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESDonna Semans, a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, has been training Navajo Nation residents to register voters.The Navajo Nation is politically heterogeneous: Jonathan Nez, above left, its president, is a Democrat who supports Joseph R. Biden Jr., while its vice president,
Myron Lizer, right, a Republican, endorsed President Trump at the national convention. But the nation votes more Democratic than Arizona as a whole.‘Everything takes time.’
DARLENE YAZZIE, who filled out her primary ballot in the doorway of her post office, which is 10 miles away, the moment she received it because she didn’t want it to arrive late.