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KSJD Newscast - April 14th, 2016

  • San Juan County, Utah, is firing back over charges it violated the Voting Rights Act by moving to a mail-in ballot system in 2014.

San Juan County, Utah, is firing back over charges it violated the Voting Rights Act by moving to a mail-in ballot system in 2014. The Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission and seven individual plaintiffs filed suit February 25th in U.S. District Court against the county clerk and commissioners alleging the new system means Navajo citizens have less opportunity to vote than whites. They said that’s because the only place to vote in person on Election Day was the county seat of Monticello, and most Navajo residents live a long distance away. They also said some elder Navajos struggled to understand the English-language mail ballots. But in a counterclaim March 31st, the county says the lawsuit was filed in bad faith because the county had already made changes for 2016 that include three new sites for in-person voting and Navajo-language ballots in audio form at all polling locations. The counterclaim also charges that the lawsuit is the result of a conspiracy involving one of the seven plaintiffs, Mark Maryboy, his brother Kenneth Maryboy, and Manual Morgan. One of those three had always held the District 3 commission seat until 2014, when the county alleges the mail-in system allowed a new person, Rebecca Benally, to be elected.

Gail Binkly is a career journalist who has worked for the Colorado Springs Gazette and Cortez Journal, and was the editor of the Four Corners Free Press, based in Cortez.
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