By Graham Lee Brewer, Associated Press

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A new study has found that systemic barriers to voting on tribal lands contribute to substantial disparities in Native American turnout, particularly for presidential elections, although Nevada was the lone state to close that turnout gap in 2022.

The study, released Tuesday by the Brennan Center for Justice, looked at 21 states with federally recognized tribal lands that have a population of at least 5,000 and where more than 20 percent of residents identify as American Indian or Alaska Native. Researchers found that between 2012 and 2022, voter participation in federal elections was 7 percentage points lower in midterms and 15 percentage points lower in presidential elections than among those living off tribal lands in the same states.

Earlier studies show voter turnout for communities of color is higher in areas where their ethnic group is the majority, but the latest research found that turnout was the lowest on tribal lands that have a high concentration of Native Americans, the Brennan Center said.

“There’s something more intensely happening in Native American communities on tribal land,” said Chelsea Jones, a researcher on the study.

Nevada, which has 28 federally recognized tribes, bands and communities located on 31 reservations and colonies, was among the 21 states included in the study. It was the only one that bucked the trend, with 0.2 percent more voter participation by Native Americans on tribal lands than off of it in 2022.

The state has passed bills in recent years, including after the period examined in the Brennan study, to boost participation.

In 2021, Nevada lawmakers passed legislation allowing tribes to request a polling location or ballot drop box on reservations or colonies, and then in 2023 made those polling options on tribal land a requirement unless a tribe opts out. Nearly 20 Nevada tribes had a voting location or ballot drop box in use on tribal land in the 2024 election.

Another 2023 bill also allowed tribal members to cast a ballot using the state’s Effective Absentee System for Elections (EASE) system, which allows military, overseas and some disabled voters to register to vote and cast a ballot online, without having to vote in person at a polling location.

In Nevada’s 2024 general election, about 60 votes were cast by tribal members using the EASE system, and more than 6,000 voters used voting options on tribal lands, according to the secretary of state’s office. The office said initial turnout data for precincts that include tribal land was up 36 percent in 2024 compared with 2022, nearly double the statewide turnout increase over that period.

Jones said the study suggests some barriers may be insurmountable in predominately Native communities due to a lack of adequate polling places or access to early and mail-in ballots. Many residents on tribal lands have nontraditional addresses, meaning they don't have street names or house numbers, making mail-in voting even more difficult. As a result, many Native American voters rely on P.O. boxes, but the study notes that several jurisdictions will not mail ballots to P.O. boxes.

Long distances to the polls that do exist on tribal lands and little to no public transportation creates additional hurdles for Native American voters. In far-flung Alaska Native villages, polling places sometimes simply don't open if there's no one available to run an election, and severe weather can make absentee voting unreliable, The Associated Press reported last month.

“When you think about people who live on tribal lands having to go 30, 60, 100 miles (up to 160 kilometers) to cast a ballot, that is an extremely limiting predicament to be in," Jones said. "These are really, truly severe barriers.”

Additionally, Jones said they found Native American voters were denied the ability to vote using their tribal IDs in several places, including in states where that is legally allowed. All of these roadblocks to the ballot can create a sense of distrust in the system, which could contribute to lower turnout, Jones said.

The Brennan Center study also highlights an ongoing issue when it comes to understanding how or why Native Americans vote: a lack of good data.

“There are immense data inequities when it comes to studying Native American communities, especially as it pertains to politics," Jones said.

Native American communities are often overlooked when it comes to polling data and sometimes when they are included those studies do not reflect broader trends for Indigenous voters, said Stephanie Fryberg, the director of the Research for Indigenous Social Action & Equity Center, which studies systemic inequalities faced by Indigenous people.

“Generally speaking, polling is not well positioned to do a good job for Indian Country,” said Fryberg, who is also a professor of psychology at Northwestern University. “There are ideas that are held up as the gold standard about how polling works that don’t work for Indian Country because of where we live, because of how difficult it is to connect to people in our community.”

Fryberg, a member of the Tulalip Tribes in Washington state, was one of several Indigenous researchers who denounced a recent exit poll conducted by Edison Research that found 65 percent of Native American voters who participated said they voted for Donald Trump. The poll only surveyed 229 self-identified Native Americans, a sample size that she said is too small for an accurate reading, and none of the jurisdictions in the poll were on tribal lands.

“Right there, you’re already eliminating a powerful perspective,” Fryberg said.

The Indigenous Journalists Association labelled that polling data as “highly misleading and irresponsible,” saying it has led “to widespread misinformation.”

In a statement to the Associated Press, Edison Research acknowledged that the polling size is small, but said the "goal of the survey is to represent the national electorate and to have enough data to also examine large demographic and geographic subgroups." The survey has a potential sampling margin of error of plus or minus 9 percent, according to the statement.

“Based on all of these factors, this data point from our survey should not be taken as a definitive word on the American Indian vote,” the statement reads.

Native Americans are not just part of an ethnic group, they also have political identities that come with being citizens of sovereign nations. Fryberg said allowing those surveyed to self-identify as Native Americans, without follow-up questions about tribal membership and specific Indigenous populations, means that data cannot accurately capture voting trends for those communities.

Both Fryberg and Jones said that in order to create better data on and opportunities for Native Americans to vote, researchers and lawmakers would have to meet the specific needs of Indigenous communities. Jones said passage of the Native American Voting Rights Act, a bill that has stalled in Congress, would ensure equitable in-person voting options in every precinct on tribal lands.

“This is not an issue that we see across the country,” Jones said. “It’s very specific to tribal lands. So we need provisions that address that uniquely.”

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Graham Lee Brewer is an Oklahoma City-based member of the AP's Race and Ethnicity team.

Additional reporting by The Nevada Independent. 

This story was updated at 11:40 a.m. on 12/6/23 to correct the date of the EASE expansion and add details about tribal land turnout in Nevada.