P.O. box issue to go
before Ariz. high court

By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — The political dispute surrounding Arizona State Sen. Albert Hale and the question of Navajos with no street addresses goes before the Arizona Supreme Court on Monday.

Hale, D-Window Rock, last week won a challenge in Mariciopa Superior Court filed by his Republican challenger, Royce Jenkins, but Jenkins has filed an appeal and Hale said the matter is scheduled to be taken up by the Supreme Court on Monday.

The issue is the same as it was in Superior Court. Should Hale be allowed to count his petitions from Navajos who gave only their post office box number and did not list a street address, an issue that has become somewhat controversial in Arizona in the last few weeks.

Hale’s district includes all of the Navajo reservation in Arizona, which means that county election officials in Apache, Navajo and Coconino counties handled the certification of his signatures. Apache County Election Chief LeNora Johnson accepted post office box numbers, but her counterparts in the other two counties rejected more than 100 signatures gathered by Hale on his petitions.

At the Superior Court hearing, Johnson said in verifying the signatures she called up a state database that included both the person’s post office box as well as a description of where their house was located. If the post office box numbers matched, she certified the signature.

The problem, according to Hale and others familiar with Indian Country, is that most people living on the Navajo reservation do not have physical street addresses.

The post offices on the Navajo reservation do not have home delivery, so most Navajo families must use post office boxes or get the mail sent to them via general delivery to their nearest post office.

“They’re under pressure,” said Hale, “because the ballots for the primary have to be printed up.