‘Mail voting doesn’t work for Navajo Nation’: Native Americans face steep election hurdles
The pandemic has led to a surge in postal ballots but mail posted on the reservation has to travel as much as 244 miles further than mail posted off-reservation
Tamisha Jensen requested a mail ballot in mid-September. Mail ballots don’t ship in Arizona until 7 October, but she’s worried her first absentee ballot won’t get to her.
Jensen, a jeweler who lives in the Navajo Nation, doesn’t have a regular mailing address – she writes “a mile west of Cameron Chapter House” – and the US Postal Service doesn’t deliver to her rural, desert home. She and her family share a PO box at the tiny Cameron post office, but it’s not always reliable: she didn’t receive her son’s school report card last year and she doesn’t know what else she might have missed.
