Voters are being turned away at the polls in Apache County despite a judge ruling that nine sites on the Navajo Nation must remain open an additional two hours to address voting problems earlier in the day, according to an election law attorney.
“The poll workers there are not letting the voters cast a ballot, they’re saying it does not apply to them,” Patty Ferguson-Bohnee, director for Arizona Native Vote Election Protection Project, told Arizona Luminaria over the phone at about 7:40 p.m., nearly an hour after the order was handed down.
“That’s problematic,” she continued. “They’re denying the right to vote for those voters, they had five people who’ve left.”
Navajo Nation Attorney General Ethel Branch in a Facebook post referred to the day’s events as “reprehensible,” reiterating Ferguson-Bohnee’s claim that voters were being turned away even after the ruling.
“Our people braved long lines that extended out the doors of polling sites and our people were forced to endure cold winter temperatures and 3 to 4 hour wait times,” she wrote. “And despite that, and our legal victory, our people at the Chinle poll site who are from the Canyon de Chelly precinct are being yelled at by poll workers voters [sic] and being told to leave.”
Both Branch and Ferguson-Bohnee repeated earlier reports of issues with ballot-on-demand printers and long lines at the polls on the Navajo Nation.
Ferguson-Bohnee went reiterated earlier reports of issues with ballot-on-demand printers and long lines at polls on the Navajo Nation.
“They were not prepared,” she said. “They didn’t have these problems in the non-Native parts of the county but they had these in the Native parts of the county.”
Ferguson-Bohnee said officials with Native Vote would try to get in touch with the county to resolve the issue. In the meantime, she stressed that voters “should stay in line.”
Following the early morning allegations of voting problems a judge ordered late Tuesday that nine polling sites in Apache County must remain open until 9 p.m., an additional two hours after Arizona law normally mandates polls close, according to Navajo Nation officials.
The ruling by Apache County Superior Court Judge Michael Latham comes after the Navajo Nation sued Apache County Tuesday evening to keep polling places throughout the region open longer following early morning reports of technical issues and long lines at voting sites on the reservation.
The judge ordered voting sites at Lukachukai, Lupton, Rock Point, St. Michael’s, Wheatfields, Dennehotso, Chinle, Cottonwood and Ft. Defiance to accept voters until 9 p.m., according to a news release from Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren shared on social media.
The ruling was limited to those nine locations because “those were the polling locations that the court received evidence specifically supported by documentation,” the news release states.
“He (Latham) said his decision was based on the lack of preprinted ballots as well as the lack of necessary machines to allow people to vote,” the news release continued.
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes announced the lawsuit during a press conference just after 6 p.m., an hour before polls were set to close. By then, all but one of the sites in Apache County were “consistently and constantly up,” Fontes said.
“The Secretary of State’s office is and will remain a neutral in that litigation,” he said. “We will allow those parties to fight that out and help folks comply with the order, regardless of what the order is.
Fontes at an earlier 3 p.m. press conference said most of the polling sites were up and running but that there were still some “residual issues.” He also clarified that the earlier issues occurred countywide and not just on the Navajo Nation.
This isn’t the first time the county has been sued for election issues. Indigenous people in Apache County experienced voting rights problems in the 2022 general election when a polling place didn’t open on time. All polling locations in Arizona are legally required to be open at 6 a.m. and close at 7 p.m.
The Navajo Nation Department of Justice and the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona filed a successful lawsuit representing the Navajo Nation. As the polls closed in 2022, an Apache County Superior Court judge approved an emergency order requiring Apache County officials to extend voting hours until 9 p.m.
In a now-deleted post on X, Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren first called attention to the problems in Apache County, stating at about 9 a.m. that voters were “being turned away without casting a ballot in the federal and state elections.”
Emily Craiger, an attorney with The Burgess Law Group representing Apache County, told Arizona Luminaria early afternoon Tuesday that the county experienced issues with ballot-on-demand printers Tuesday morning and a fix had been deployed.
“I know there’s been reports of, quote, voting machines being down. That’s inaccurate,” Craiger said. “Everyone votes on a paper ballot in Apache County. The only difference is they weren’t printed on the printer there, they had paper ballots there available as a backup, and then they also sent additional paper ballots while the printer issue was being resolved.
“And then those paper ballots, once completed, were put in a ballot box just like any other paper ballot would be,” Craiger continued. “And those ultimately get transported back for tabulation at the central count location.”
Craiger said they worked to keep the lines down at voting locations with the issue.
“Voting continued through the whole process. Apache County had a backup plan in place and it worked,” Craiger said.
Ferguson-Bohnee told Arizona Luminaria Tuesday morning that its volunteers at a number of polling locations on the Navajo Nation in Apache County were also relaying reports of issues, including delayed opening at some sites due to equipment issues, issues related to printing ballots and long lines.
“I don’t know really what happened, if they didn’t print ballots in advance and they’re printing them now,” she said of initial reports coming into the hotline. “There’s one location that’s printing them on, I think, a different weight paper so they’re going to be processing those later.”
She said earlier county officials may have been redirecting voters to other locations and perhaps that’s why they seemed to be running out of ballots. “We’re not sure what the root of the problem is, why this is happening,” she said.
Neither Craiger nor Ferguson-Bohnee immediately knew if the issues were also occurring at locations off the Navajo Nation.
Ferguson-Bohnee said Native Vote was tracking the issues in Apache County and would continue monitoring.
“If they’re not being issued ballots they should call our hotline and then if they see our volunteers to report it,” she recommended. “But they should try to stay in line so they can vote if they’re at a polling location.”
The hotline can be reached at 1-888-777-3831.
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