Decodedc

When San Juan County, Utah made the move to all mail-in voting in 2014, it seemed like a great idea. The county is almost 8,000 square miles with about 15,000 residents and voting by mail meant you no longer had to travel to a polling place. But for residents of the Navajo reservation, about half the county’s population, that change actually made voting more difficult. Gone were the six in-person polling places on the reservation and gone were the translators to help the many Navajo-only speakers vote. The mail-in ballot was English only, and Navajo is a predominantly spoken language. “My first reaction was what about those people that don't speak English? What happens to those people?” said Terry Whitehat, who lives in a part of the reservation called Navajo Mountain.  The one place left to vote in person was located off the reservation, which for Whitehat meant up to a 10-hour return trip drive. How were these voters going to be able to vote wondered Whitehat. “Basically, it’s impossible,” he said. This we