White House releases report on Native American voting rights

Arizona: Local, state and federal officials must do more to ensure Native Americans facing persistent, longstanding and deep-rooted barriers to voting have equal access to ballots, said a White House report released on Thursday.

Native Americans and Alaska Natives vote at lower rates than the national average but have been a key constituency in tight races and states with large Native populations.

A surge in voter turnout among tribal members in Arizona, for example, helped lead Joe Biden to victory in the state that had not supported a Democrat in a White House contest since 1996.

The Biden administration's report comes a year after he issued an executive order promoting voting rights and establishing a steering committee to look at particular barriers to voting in Indigenous communities.

Those include state laws and local practices that disenfranchise Indigenous voters, unequal access to early voting and reliance on a mail system that is unreliable, the report stated.

For far too long, members of tribal nations and Native communities have faced unnecessary burdens when they attempt to exercise their sacred right to vote, the White House said.

The administration called on Congress to pass voting rights legislation, including the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and another focused on Native Americans.

But those bills are going nowhere as the Republicans would not support them and Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have been unwilling to override the filibuster to allow the legislation to pass.