Voting in the Bush can be difficult (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Voting in the Bush can be difficult
REMOTE: Ballots don't always reach people far from polls.

By ALEX deMARBAN
Anchorage Daily News
http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/8385125p-8281041c.html

(Published: November 7, 2006)
Anchorage voters who juggle busy schedules or traffic jams to reach
polls have it easy compared to hundreds of residents around the state
who live in wilderness cabins far from a mailbox.

Such remote residents live up and down rivers like the Kantishna in the
Interior, said Shelly Growden, elections supervisor for more than 70
communities in an arching swath of Alaska that includes the Interior.

To vote this year, those people traveled by boat to hub communities such
as Nenana, where they mailed special advance ballots up to two months
before the election, said Growden.

Before 2004, when the Legislature changed the law for remote Alaskans,
those people received standard absentee ballots just two to three weeks
before an election, Growden said. Some of them couldn't get to a mailbox
in time because rivers froze by election day, so they couldn't vote, she
said.

Distance and weather are just two of the challenges the state must
overcome to deliver democracy in some of the most isolated regions of
the United States.

About 24 villages don't even have polling places, according to a study
on voting rights in Alaska released in March. Those are places like
Rampart, population 16, along the Yukon River, Growden said, or Stony
River, population 42, on the upper Kuskokwim.

Residents in those tiny villages -- and in isolated cabins -- are
considered permanent absentee voters. There are about 1,000 in
Growden's region, which includes portions of Western and eastern
Alaska.

The state sends those voters ballot information and applications for
absentee ballots, Growden said.

The paperwork doesn't automatically come, said Mary Willis, tribal
administrator in Stony River. She had to call the state to get one for
the primary election in August, she said.

Just a few people in the Yup'ik and Athabascan village will vote, she
said.

Many people she's asked have said they didn't get voting materials by
mail, she said. Their only option now is flying downriver to the polls
in Sleetmute -- the river isn't frozen enough for snowmachine travel. A
round-trip flight runs about $100, she said. No one will do that, she
said.

"For a lot of people, (voting) is a hassle," she said.

Growden said she sent every registered voter in the village an
application. If they didn't return the applications, they didn't get
ballots.

Turnout varies in villages. In 2004, with Sen. Lisa Murkowski opposed by
former Gov. Tony Knowles, it ranged from more than 70 percent to 12
percent, according to the study, compiled by Natalie Landreth of the
Native American Rights Fund's Anchorage office and Moira Smith, a law
student at Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law.

The study argues that under federal law, the state should provide
ballots in Native languages. It should also do more to provide
interpreters.

More than 14,000 people speak Yup'ik and Inupiaq, mostly in Western and
northern Alaska, according to the study.

The state argues that written materials aren't necessary because
Alaska's Native languages are historically unwritten, Growden said.

The study points out that Yup'ik became a written language more than 100
years ago and has been taught in schools for more than 30 years. Other
Native languages have developed writing systems in the last 40 years or
so.

Election officials in Western and northern Alaska try to ensure that
precincts have interpreters, said Becka Baker, Nome-based supervisor
for those regions.

In some small villages where there's no official interpreter, elders who
don't know enough English go to polls with family members who interpret,
she said.

Voting in the Bush can be a challenge, said George Keene Jr., former
elections chairman in Kasigluk in Southwest Alaska.

At the last minute on Monday, he agreed to serve as the absentee voting
official, filling in for another villager with a family emergency. The
Johnson River divides Kasigluk and the polling place is located in the
new village, where about half the voters live, Keene said.

If Keene hadn't filled in, voters in the old village might have had to
maneuver skiffs through thin ice, slush and open water to vote. Now
they'll be able to walk to the school library and fill out absentee
forms.

"This voting day tomorrow is very important," he said Monday. "People
should go vote."



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Daily News reporter Alex deMarban can be reached at ademarban at adn.com or
257-4310.