Six years after California lawmakers approved legislation meant to remove barriers to voting for Native Americans, the state still hasn’t created the advisory committee the law called for — leaving tribal communities across the Inland Empire and the rest of the state to navigate long drives to polling places and unreliable mail service largely on their own.
The California Secretary of State’s office confirmed to CalMatters/ICT that the Native American Voting Accessibility Advisory Committee, required under a 2020 law, has yet to be formed. A spokesperson for Secretary of State Shirley Weber, who asked not to be named, said recruitment for the panel would begin “after the November election.”
For advocates who have pushed for the committee’s creation, the delay is becoming hard to stomach.
“It’s really frustrating,” said Calvin Hedrick, director of policy for the California Native Vote Project, a group that works to expand voting access for Native communities statewide. “It’s a bummer to have to fight for something again after it was already promised by statute.”
A law with no teeth
The legislation, Assembly Bill 2314, was introduced by Assemblymember James Ramos, a Democrat representing San Bernardino and a member of the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians. He remains the only Native American from a California tribe ever elected to the state Legislature. Then-Secretary of State Alex Padilla sponsored the bill, declaring in 2020 that California’s nearly 750,000 Native Americans “deserve to have their voices heard in our democracy.”
At the time, Anthony Roberts, chairman of the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, warned that limited polling locations and strict identification rules were keeping tribal members from the ballot box. “Until those obstacles are addressed, California’s Native Americans remain at risk of being excluded,” he said.
The law directed the committee to develop outreach strategies, recommend public service announcements ahead of elections, suggest ways to recruit more Native poll workers, and advise on translated and plain-language voting materials. However, its recommendations would carry no binding authority — the secretary of state would only be required to “consider” them.
Critics say the law’s structure all but guaranteed inaction. It set no deadline for forming the committee, provided no funding, and didn’t require consultation with tribal governments. Unlike the state’s Language Accessibility Advisory Committee, which must meet at least four times annually, AB 2314 included no requirement for regular meetings at all.
“Lacking those things, it’s pretty clear it’s just going to end up in the dustbin,” said Allison Neswood, a senior staff attorney with the Native American Rights Fund and a citizen of the Navajo Nation.
Ramos’ office did not make him available for comment despite repeated requests. A spokeswoman said in October that his staff was “still working on” scheduling an interview.
Few answers from Sacramento
When asked why the committee had sat dormant for six years, Weber’s office said it has been “working closely with Native American advocates to review our committee-related documents” and plans to begin recruiting members soon. The office did not respond to follow-up questions about what, if any, funding had been requested or which advocates had been consulted.
In the meantime, the California Native Vote Project has continued its own voter outreach — without state support. With only two staffers covering all of Northern California, Hedrick said the organization is “stretched really thin.”
“It’s something we need to really be pushing for over the next few years — and we can’t allow them to rest and forget about it,” Hedrick said. “We can’t allow them to promise us it’s something they’re going to do next year. We need to hold their feet to the fire and make sure it gets done.”
Under California law, the secretary of state is the state’s chief elections officer and is responsible for promoting voter access broadly. But decisions about where to place polling sites and drop boxes are left largely to county election officials. The state does not require counties to establish polling locations on tribal lands, even though California is home to 109 federally recognized tribal nations.
Persistent obstacles at the polls
Problems surfaced again this election cycle. In Shasta County, a California Native Vote Project monitor observed a Redding Rancheria citizen initially turned away at a polling place; the voter later managed to cast a ballot. On the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation — the largest in California — volunteers organized a vehicle caravan to drive elders from remote parts of tribal land to the reservation’s only polling site.
National research backs up what advocates are seeing locally. The Native American Rights Fund has published two reports, in 2020 and again this year, documenting systemic barriers to voting for Native Americans and Alaska Natives nationwide. Neither report focused specifically on California counties, but Hedrick said the patterns match what he hears regularly from tribal members in rural parts of the state.
“For people who live in a city where their ballot box is often a 10-minute drive or less, it’s unfathomable to think someone would have to drive an hour or more to vote — but that’s the reality in many of our communities,” said Hedrick, who is Mountain Maidu.
California has mailed ballots to all active registered voters since 2021, a policy intended to widen access. But advocates say that system still leaves rural tribal communities behind, since many reservations have spotty or infrequent mail delivery and lack a nearby post office, drop box or polling location altogether.
A 2024 analysis published in the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review found that vote-by-mail systems in Indian Country are undermined by weak postal infrastructure. Torey Dolan, a Choctaw citizen and law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wrote that inadequate mail service “immediately impacts the ability of voters to receive and cast a ballot via mail.” Roughly 89% of existing post offices nationwide were established before 1920 — long before many tribal communities expanded or relocated.
Voter registration poses its own challenges. Many Native residents living on tribal land in California lack a permanent street address, complicating efforts to assign them to the correct voting precinct. Limited broadband access in many tribal communities adds another layer of difficulty.
There have been some bright spots. In September 2023, the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians partnered with the state to designate its tribal health clinic as an official voter registration site under the National Voter Registration Act — the first such designation for a tribal medical facility in the country, according to Weber’s office at the time.
A missed opportunity, advocates say
Hedrick said a functioning advisory committee couldn’t force counties to add polling places, but it could help coordinate outreach, build relationships and restore trust between tribal nations and a state government that many Native residents feel has long overlooked them.
“If Native people consistently see that their voices and their priorities and their people aren’t represented in these institutions, it just reinforces the lack of trust,” Neswood said. “We’re fighting an uphill battle.”
For Hedrick, rebuilding that trust starts with showing up — something he believes the long-delayed committee was designed to help accomplish.
“We need people out in tribal communities listening to voters and talking to people who aren’t registered — I think that’s something this committee could be doing,” he said. “It became statute in 2020, we’re talking in 2026, and it still hasn’t happened yet, and it’s not happening now.”
Original source: CalMatters
