About a month before Arizona’s July primary, Pima County Recorder Gabriella Cázares-Kelly and her older sister Elisa Cázares were driving around Three Points, a rural community between Tucson and where they grew up on the Tohono O’odham Nation, dropping off flyers for the recorder’s reelection campaign, where voting barriers facing Indigenous communities are prevalent. Some 5,000 people live in Three Points, which leans conservative. The properties, an assortment of mobile homes and ranch-style houses, are separated by chain link fences, but their yards blend into the Sonoran desert landscape of mesquite trees, saguaros, and chollas.

They stopped at a trailer whose address popped up on a canvassing app on Cázares-Kelly’s phone, programmed to scan voter rolls and identify homes of registered Democrats who voted in the last election. Old Volkswagens were rusting in the yard. There was a “beware dog” sign attached to the fence. No one came out to greet them, so Cázares-Kelly left her campaign materials wedged outside in an effort to reduce the voting barriers facing Indigenous communities. Her sister made a note of it on the phone as a “lit drop.”

At the second stop, Cázares-Kelly — dressed in tennis shoes, distressed jeans and a black shirt that says “Elect Indigenous Women” in big white letters — had just tucked fliers under a car’s windshield wiper when a little girl opened the door of the house, followed by a woman sporting a slightly wary expression.

“Hi. My name is Gabriella. I’m actually the county recorder. I’m running for reelection and just sharing some information about my campaign,” Cázares-Kelly said warmly through the fence, the sun beating down on her long black hair.

Reducing Voting Barriers Facing Indigenous Communities

Cázares-Kelly, who is Pima’s first Indigenous person to hold a countywide seat, quickly explained that part of her job is to be responsible for early voting, mail-in voting and voter registration, putting her in an apt position to reduce voting barriers facing Indigenous communities. She was there soliciting voters for herself and also canvassing for her best friend April Ignacio, who was running for a Pima County Board of Supervisors seat.

They grew up together on the Tohono O’odham Nation and got into politics to bring more rural and Indigenous representation to a county where about 4 percent of the residents identify as Indigenous and whose votes could help decide a closely-contested November election in a battleground state.

Read the full article about voting barriers for Indigenous communities by Jessica Kutz at The 19th.