How Arizona tackles a language barrier to provide Navajo voters a ballot they can listen to

he group of Navajo speakers gathered in Flagstaff were deep into translating the pages stacked in front of them when they began deliberating over how to best describe fentanyl.

It wouldn’t be a straight translation — almost nothing is, from English to Navajo. But these county and state election officials, charged with translating Arizona’s long and complex ballot for a key group of voters on the Navajo Nation, would try their best to get it right.

“Not azee’,” someone said. “Azee’ is medicine. It’s to heal.”

They looked down at the English text: “Criminalizes selling fentanyl that causes the death of a person.”




https://www.votebeat.org/arizona/2024/09/17/navajo-indigenous-oral-language-translation-voting-rights-act-203/