The Untold Story of an Election Breakdown in Rural Arizona

Apache County, Arizona, was an election disaster waiting to happen.

The impoverished, rural county saw widespread equipment failures in 2024, particularly on Navajo Nation, which spans its northern half. Consequently, voters were left waiting in long lines in freezing temperatures, and voting rights advocates say some were disenfranchised.

Later, as tribal officials called for accountability, the county’s top election official quietly left her post. Still, county officials revealed little about what went wrong—or what was to stop the saga from repeating.

In 2026, the stakes are far higher. President Donald Trump’s administration has repeatedly voiced falsehoods around noncitizen voting and election fraud. His Justice Department said it would send 1,000 monitors to the polls in November, and some of them are almost certain to land in Navajo Nation, which saw monitoring during the state primary.

A repeat of 2024 could not only hurt the county’s voters, but also lead to new conspiracies that significantly damage election trust in a key swing state. Votebeat and the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting pored over thousands of pages of documents to investigate unanswered questions about the debacle and what it means in a new administration.