As communities around the Four Corners continue to recover from major flooding, election officials are bracing for yet more inclement weather ahead of Election Day.
The National Weather Service has issued a flood watch from Saturday night until Monday morning for northern and eastern Arizona. Much of the Navajo Nation, already saturated by previous rainfall, could receive an additional inch of rain over the weekend.
Navajo County Deputy Elections Director Christen Haddox said her office was rushing to get rural polling places set up ahead of storms expected this weekend.
And Haddox said they're preparing for the possibility that heavy rainfall could flood roads, cutting off some voters from polling places.
She’s most concerned about polling locations on the Navajo Nation, in the northern portion of Navajo County.
“Specifically Black Mesa is on a terrible dirt road,” Haddox said. “It's not just a dirt road. It's a sandy road. So when it gets wet, it gets very, very difficult for people to get in and out of there.”
Residents across the Four Corners region, including on the Navajo Nation and the Hopi Reservation, are still recovering from last week’s flooding.
Numerous communities remain without water and electricity service. As of Friday morning, the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority was reporting outages in Tuba, Kayenta, Chinle, Ft. Defiance, Shiprock and elsewhere.
“I'm watching the weather every single day,” Haddox said. “Hopefully, we're going to see some better weather Monday and Tuesday is what I have my fingers crossed for.”
Haddox says the county is prepared to redirect voters to alternate polling places if weather makes roads impassable.
“We're election officials,” Haddox said. “We're ready for plan A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I. So whatever happens, we're going to figure it out and do what we have to do.”
Voting advocates, meanwhile, are encouraging tribal members to cast their ballots early.
“Our only defense is early voting at this point and getting that message out to as many people as we can, because we don't know what's going to happen on Election Day,” said Janie Parrish, executive director of the nonpartisan voter outreach organization Arizona Native Vote.
Parrish said they have worked to spread the message that voting has to be a priority, even as so many tribal members continue to be impacted by the flooding.
“We can take care of our communities and we can vote,” she said. “We need to do both. So don't forget about voting, even though it might not be on their radar right now, considering all the emergencies.”
And she’s also reminding Indigenous people that their votes carry power.
“That's where we have to keep telling people, ‘Your vote is directly related to things like this emergency and funding and infrastructure. And, all of this is connected — who's in power and who's making those decisions and funding decisions to make sure we have what we need,” Parrish said.
She said the weather is just adding uncertainty to a day that is already full of unknowns.
This week, the U.S. Department of Justice announced it would send monitors to polling places in northern Navajo County on tribal land to ensure translations are correct.
But it’s something Parrish worries could intimidate some voters.
“Any type of police authority can deter people. You just never know. So I'm hoping that they're there for good and not for intimidation factors. But we won't know that,” Parrish said.
And she said she’s worried Navajo County could see a repeat of the 2024 presidential election when polling sites received bomb threats, forcing them to close for several hours.
The Navajo Nation then sued to keep polling sites open longer than originally planned.
But even with the unknowns, Parrish said her plan for this Election Day is the same as ever: driving tribal members to the polls and getting as many people out to vote as possible.
