Native Americans have faced significant roadblocks at each step of the voting process, including registration and voting by mail, according to an analysis of the three previous elections by the Native American Rights Fund.
Between 2020 and 2024, mail-in ballot rejections were higher in places with large Native American populations such as New Mexico and Arizona. Voter registration application rejections also rose in Montana and where Native Americans make up less than tktkt of the population, the group also said.
“For Native Americans, the right to vote has been obstructed, delayed and denied across two centuries of United States history,” Jacqueline De León, senior staff attorney for the group, said in a statement. “Closing that participation gap is not simply a technical problem. It’s a question of whether American democracy is willing to extend its guarantees to all its citizens, including the first peoples of this land.”
More than 6.7 million Native Americans were eligible to vote in 2020, but 66% of them were registered, according to the organization.
