A Long Fight for the Vote: Navajos, Utes, and the Path to Equal Voting Rights

By Daniel C. McCool

In A Long Fight for the Vote, Daniel C. McCool offers a deeply researched and compelling account of the fight for equal voting rights in San Juan County, Utah--homeland to the Navajo and Ute peoples and a flashpoint of persistent Anglo-Native conflict.

Centering on landmark voting rights cases that culminated in the historic election of two Navajo county commissioners, McCool situates these legal battles within a broader history of discrimination, shifting federal Indian policy, and the gradual political empowerment of Native communities across the American West. Through meticulous analysis, the book reveals how local elections became a crucible for national debates over citizenship, sovereignty, and democracy.

Drawing on court records, expert testimony, and decades of engagement with voting rights litigation, McCool demonstrates that Native peoples have never been passive victims of disenfranchisement but active protagonists in a sustained struggle for political equality. Richly contextualized and powerfully argued, A Long Fight for the Vote speaks to scholars and students of law, politics, and Western history, as well as legal professionals and engaged readers seeking to understand how race, power, and the ballot box intersect in Indian Country--and why these struggles continue to shape American democracy today.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0816558299
• ISBN13: 9780816558292
• Release Date: March 2027
• Publisher: University of Arizona Press
• Length: 414 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.