Inequalities in Vote by Mail for Native Americans in the US West: The Historical Political Economy of Postal Service in Northeastern Arizona

Vote by mail has been disproportionately adopted by states in the US West. While voting by mail is relatively easy for most individuals, who have what the United States Postal Service (USPS) characterizes as standard mail service (residential mail delivery), it is much more difficult for those having nonstandard mail service, which requires traveling to post offices to access mail. Nonstandard mail service is the norm for Native Americans living on reservations in the US West, and for many rural non-Native neighbors. In this paper, we show how decisions taken by the USPS in the latter part of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century have resulted in deeply entrenched structural inequities in access to mail services on reservations in Arizona when compared to the services available in nonreservation communities. We explore the political economy of these decisions, most notably the military conquest of the West in the late nineteenth century and support for white settlers. These inequities seriously impinge on the ability of people living on the reservation to vote by mail in the current times. We use detailed data on precinct locations, post office locations, drop box locations, and Election Day voting sites to show there are systemic inequities that result in voters on the reservations (primarily the Navajo Nation) having less opportunity to vote than is available to other Arizona voters, both urban and rural. We also document how these differences in voting access adversely affect voting by mail among Native voters, particularly those living in the precincts with the least access.