How a Native elections official is breaking down voting barriers in Arizona

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. 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. 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.



https://azmirror.com/2024/09/03/how-a-native-elections-official-is-breaking-down-voting-barriers-in-arizona/