"Naomi White wanted to vote in Arizona’s primary in August, and wants to vote on Election Day in..."

Naomi White wanted to vote in Arizona’s 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’s 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.

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’s primary, she called the Apache County Recorder’s 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’t assign her to a precinct.

Like most people living on the Navajo Nation, White uses a P.O. Box. The US Postal Service doesn’t deliver to homes because many of them are far off from paved highways where there are no streets—much less street names. The occurrence is so common that Arizona’s 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’t be assigned a precinct, she asked of she could vote absentee instead. She says the Recorder’s office told her that she wasn’t technically registered, and couldn’t vote by mail, either. As a result, White was disenfranchised from August’s primary. According to Geneva Honea, who coordinates voter registration for the Apache County Recorder’s office, at least 528 people are in the same predicament as White.