[Despite voter suppression and a devastating pandemic, Native
American voters made the difference in Biden’s winning margin in
Arizona and Wisconsin. While Indigenous voters are not monolithic,
clear voting patterns can be seen across Indian Country.]
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ARIZONA AND WISCONSIN: HOW INDIGENOUS VOTERS HELPED SWING THE 2020
ELECTION  
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Anna V. Smith
November 9, 2020
High Country News
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_ Despite voter suppression and a devastating pandemic, Native
American voters made the difference in Biden’s winning margin in
Arizona and Wisconsin. While Indigenous voters are not monolithic,
clear voting patterns can be seen across Indian Country. _

Navajo citizens ride to cast their votes in Arizona. “We rode to
the polls to honor our ancestors who fought for the right to vote. We
also rode to honor those who died from Covid-19,” Ride to the Polls
organizer Allie Young., Levi Rickert/Native News Online

 

This year’s presidential election has been a close race in a handful
of states, including Arizona. On Wednesday, for just the second time
in 70 years, the Associated Press called the race for a Democratic
presidential candidate, in part due to the Native vote. 

Indigenous people in Arizona comprise nearly 6%
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the population — 424,955 people as of 2018 — and eligible voters
on the Navajo Nation alone number around 67,000. Currently, the margin
between Democratic candidate Joe Biden — who has released a robust
policy plan [[link removed]] for Indian Country
— and incumbent President Donald Trump is 17,131 as of Monday.
(Votes continue to be counted, so numbers may change)

Precinct-level data shows that outside of heavily blue metropolitan
areas like Phoenix and Tucson, which also have high numbers of
Indigenous voters, much of the rural blue islands that have voted for
Biden and Mark Kelly, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, are on
tribal lands. On some Tohono O’odham Nation precincts, Biden and
Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris won 98% of the
vote. As of Nov. 9, the three counties that overlap with the Hopi
Tribe and Navajo Nation went for Biden at a rate of 57%, as opposed to
51% statewide. Voter precincts on the Navajo Nation ranged from 60-90%
for Biden.

That pattern is consistent with 2016
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when the rest of the state went for Trump. “Partisan groups have
long ignored Native voters, including in states such as Arizona, New
Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana,” says Jordan James
Harvill (Cherokee), chief of staff of the nonpartisan group
VoteAmerica, which worked directly with Navajo Nation and community
partners to get out the vote. “We view these voters as some of the
highest-potential voters in the electorate and we’ll continue to
invest in voters in Indian Country for years to come.

”Indigenous people in Arizona were hit hard by the pandemic, which
was exacerbated by Republican state officials who did little to limit
the spread of COVID-19 through public safety measures like
required mask wearing
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business closures, or adequate translations for COVID-19 resources.
[[link removed]] All
this was compounded by an inadequate federal response that
delayed financial relief to tribal governments
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At one point in May, the Navajo Nation had the highest ratio of
COVID-19 cases
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the U.S., surpassing New York City. President Jonathan Nez has
criticized the Trump administration for its botched response, and the
Navajo Nation has joined other tribal nations in a lawsuit over the
dispersal of the funds
[[link removed]]. Recent
exit polls showing how Indigenous voters favored Biden overall in
Arizona
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showed the pandemic response to be the most important issue on their
minds.

In the weeks before the election, several Navajo citizens filed suit
against the state of Arizona
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the deadline for mail-in ballots. Pointing to the myriad challenges
Indigenous communities face with vote-by-mail, they asked the court to
allow ballots to be postmarked — instead of received — by 7 p.m.
on Election Day. They lost the case, but because of efforts by groups
like VoteAmerica, Four Directions, Rural Utah Project and the Nez
administration, counties like Apache County, which overlaps the Navajo
Nation and Hopi Tribe, saw 116% voter turnout compared to the 2016
election. (Votes are still being counted, so total numbers and
percentages are likely to change.)

On the Tohono O’odham Nation, which spans Pima, Maricopa and Pinal
counties, most precincts were above 90% for Biden, according to a
statewide map pulled together by ABC15 Arizona
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Throughout the Trump administration, O’odham citizens and the tribal
government have been vocal in their opposition
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the border wall, which Trump has forced through without tribal
consultation, even as it severs the landscape and destroys
[[link removed]] ancestral
O’odham sites. Those high numbers were repeated throughout precincts
covering the lands of the Hualapai, Havasupai, White Mountain Apache,
Gila River, San Carlos Apache, Pascua Yaqui, Cocopah and Colorado
River tribes, generally within the range of 70-90% for Biden.

Indigenous voters are by no means a monolith
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and the majority of Indigenous people live in urban areas
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which makes it likely that many more voted in metro areas and
therefore don’t appear in voting data from tribal lands. (In
fact, a survey done by a coalition of Indigenous organizations called
Building Indigenous Power
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that Indigenous voters on reservations were less likely to vote
compared to those in the city or small towns.) Still, clear voting
patterns can be seen across Indian Country:

* In Montana, though the state went for Trump overall, counties
overlapping with the reservations of the Blackfeet Nation, Fort
Belknap Tribes, the Crow Tribe and Northern Cheyenne Tribe went blue.
The divides were often stark; Glacier County, encompassed by the
Blackfeet Nation, went for Biden by 64%, the highest in the entire
state, while the neighboring county voted for Trump by 75%. The Native
vote in Montana has made the difference before, when Indigenous voters
helped Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat who has advocated for Indian
Country in legislation regarding water settlements, missing and
murdered Indigenous women, and tribal recognition, get elected the
last three terms in often-close races
[[link removed]].
* Wisconsin, a closely watched swing state, went narrowly for Biden
by around 20,500 votes. There, the Indigenous population is 90,189
people as of 2018. Wisconsin counties overlapping the lands of the Bad
River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, the Menominee Tribe and the
Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohicans show that voters there helped tip
the count to a Democratic majority. Menominee County, which overlaps
the Menominee Tribe’s reservation, voted for Biden 82%, compared to
the state as a whole at 49.4%.
* South Dakota went for Trump by 61% — except on tribal lands.
Counties overlapping the lands of the Standing Rock Sioux, Cheyenne
River Sioux, Oglala Sioux, Rosebud Sioux and Crow Creek tribes went
for Biden. In Oglala Lakota County, which overlaps with the Oglala
Sioux Tribe’s Pine Ridge reservation, Biden won with 88%. In Todd
County, which overlaps the Rosebud Sioux Reservation, Biden won 77% of
the vote.

Additionally, Indigenous candidates did well: A historic six Native
candidates will be heading to the U.S. Congress next term, New Mexico
has made history by becoming the second state after Hawaii whose
delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives will now be made up
entirely of women of color
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two of whom are Native. That’s in addition to dozens of Indigenous
candidates elected to state and local offices
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11 of which were elected to state office in Arizona.

As the 2020 election comes to a close, James Harvill says this
election illuminates the importance of the Native vote, which is
likely to only grow because of an increasing young population aging
into the electorate and a strong level of community support. “When
we’re looking on to the next several years, we’re going to see
that Native American voters become one of the defining members of the
electorate, much like we’re seeing of Latinx and Black voters.”

_[Anna V. Smith is an assistant editor for _High Country
News. _Email us at [email protected] or submit a letter to the edito
[[link removed]]r. Follow Anna Smith on
Twitter @annavitoriasmith [[link removed]].]_

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