WINDOW ROCK, Navajo Nation (ABC4) -- The Navajo Nation is suing Apache County, Ariz., accusing election officials of engaging in an organized effort to prevent Navajo Residents from voting in the 2024 presidential election.

Filed Nov. 12, the lawsuit is seeking an extended curing period within Apache County, accusing election officials of taking a two-day pause in ballot processing. Since the state's regular curing period only lasts five days, that pause gave Navajo residents a shorter time to get their ballots cured.

After an election, states have a set period to deal with ballots that have issues with them. These can range from registration, invalid signature verification, or arriving late from the mail. This process is called curing, and election officials are required by law to make efforts to contact voters whose ballots had issues.

The Arizona Supreme Court recently denied a suit requesting an extension to the period statewide to process over 250,000 uncured ballots.

According to the lawsuit, 182 Navajo voters within Apache County had ballots that needed to be cured. Due to the alleged pause in the counting, this gave officials only 48 hours to contact these voters. The suit points out that many voters in the Navajo Nation do not have mailing addresses.

"We mobilized phone bankers and people to go door to door actually... to reach out to those 182 folks who we were aware of that lived on the reservation, and it was quite a task," Navajo Nation Attorney General Ethel Branch told ABC4.com. "And there was about a 2% success rate in making the phone calls."

Branch said the situation was made more alarming because it was originally thought only three voters needed cured ballots.

"That was alarming to us because we felt like, ok, now there's 179 additional voters that you just learned about in the last 24 hours," Branch stated. "Have those people all been contacted and given an adequate opportunity? Have they been given [a] reasonable and fair opportunity to cure their ballots?"

The lawsuit allegations that Apache County had not made "reasonable efforts" to contact Navajo residents regarding the problems with their ballots and that Apache County had failed to report that they had received their ballots through the state's ballot tracking system.

Branch said issues like these are not new with elections conducted on the Navajo Nation. With the nation spanning 4 states, it is subjected to each state's unique voting laws. On top of that, each county can have different voting systems. Branch said with many rural communities within the Nation -- often with unpaved roads -- voters can have difficulties getting to drop boxes. "It makes it very difficult to make sure there's a standard acceptable across us."

"Apache County has been a problem in the last few elections," Branch asserted. "They are the worst honestly."

If the suit is successful in court, it would allow an additional three-day window to allow for ballots to be cured and would require the county to contact "all local media and by posting sufficient notices" regarding that cure process.

"There are a lot of barriers for Navajo people to vote," said Branch. "So, when people go through all the effort and they are the few actually received their early ballots, we want to make sure that those ballots count. And that's so much more precious in terms of the effort that had to go into getting that ballot and putting it into a drop box."

ABC4.com reached out to Apache County for a comment and has not yet received a reply.

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