{"id":2785,"date":"2012-10-23T10:41:02","date_gmt":"2012-10-23T14:41:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/?p=2785"},"modified":"2012-10-23T10:41:02","modified_gmt":"2012-10-23T14:41:02","slug":"democracy-in-suspense-why-arizonas-native-voters-are-in-peril","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/2012\/10\/democracy-in-suspense-why-arizonas-native-voters-are-in-peril\/","title":{"rendered":"Democracy in Suspense: Why Arizona’s Native Voters Are in Peril"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Arizona\u2019s Apache County is obscuring the collective power of the Native vote in an unprecedented way. The County, which has previously violated the Voting Rights Act, has inaccurately placed more than 500 people who attempted to register on a list that could permanently purge these would-be voters from the rolls. And most, if not all, of those affected are Navajo.<\/p>\n

Naomi White wanted to vote in Arizona\u2019s primary in August, and wants to vote on Election Day in November. White had previously voted in Utah, and when she moved back to live on the Navajo Nation\u2019s capital of Window Rock, she registered to vote in Arizona when she updated her license last year. But she told me she never received correspondence confirming her registration.<\/p>\n

The 30-year-old attorney still primarily resides in Window Rock, but works some 300 miles away as a prosecutor for the Gila River Indian Community. Sometime before August\u2019s primary, she called the Apache County Recorder\u2019s office to see if she could vote early in the election, since she would be out in the field on the date of the primary. She says she was told that the physical address she listed was too obscure, and the Recorder couldn\u2019t assign her to a precinct.<\/p>\n

Like most people living on the Navajo Nation, White uses a PO Box. The US Postal Service doesn\u2019t deliver to homes because many of them are far off from paved highways where there are no streets\u2014much less street names. The occurrence is so common that Arizona\u2019s voter registration form includes a large box on which people can draw the location of their home, in order to help identify their precinct. White says that after she was told she couldn\u2019t be assigned a precinct, she asked of she could vote absentee instead. She says the Recorder\u2019s office told her that she wasn\u2019t technically registered, and couldn\u2019t vote by mail, either. As a result, White was disenfranchised from August\u2019s primary. According to Geneva Honea, who coordinates voter registration for the Apache County Recorder\u2019s office, at least 528 people are in the same predicament as White.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0<\/strong>Democracy in Suspense: Why Arizonas Native Voters Are in Peril | The Nation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Arizona\u2019s Apache County is obscuring the collective power of the Native vote in an unprecedented way. The County, which has previously violated the Voting Rights Act, has inaccurately placed more than 500 people who attempted to register on a list that could permanently purge these would-be voters from the rolls. And most, if not all,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,17,22],"tags":[1520,1564,1525,1563,356],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2785"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2785"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2788,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2785\/revisions\/2788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}