Native Americans often have to travel long distances to register to vote. Many also don’t have access to postal service, making it hard to register through the mail, and they lack internet, making it difficult to register online. What’s more, many tribal homes don’t have traditional addresses, creating a challenge for citizens to complete voter registration forms that ask for their address.
“All of that is rooted in the historic treatment of Native American communities,” said Allison Neswood, who is Navajo and a staff attorney with the Native American Rights Fund. “And so it’s, I think, our collective responsibility to make sure that our communities can overcome these barriers and have a say in the leadership that impacts our communities every day.”
But Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Michigan now give tribes the option to use automatic voter registration. That could mean eligible citizens are automatically registered when they enroll in a tribe.
In Colorado, if a tribe decides to participate in the process, it would enter a memorandum of understanding with the Secretary of State on the mechanics of the data transfer. The process would be similar in New Mexico. Meanwhile, in Nevada, a tribal nation can submit a request to the governor to designate an agency of the tribe as an automatic voter agency.
So far, no tribe is doing this yet. But Neswood said several played a role in the passage of these laws, suggesting the possibility they will roll out automatic voter registration in the coming years.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Colorado and KANW in New Mexico, with support from affiliate stations across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
