SALT LAKE CITY (AP) – Navajo Nation member Davis Filfred prefers casting a ballot the old fashioned way at a polling place. But he’s worried he may have to make a three-hour round-trip drive this November to make that happen.

San Juan County in southeastern Utah switched to an all-mail ballot election system in 2014, leaving only one polling place in the northern county seat of Monticello for that election. That meant tribal members who live in far-flung corners of the county had to drive twice as far as white residents, according to a Navajo group who filed a federal lawsuit in February over the new system.

Filfred is among the tribal members hoping a federal judge on Wednesday grants the group’s request for an injunction that would require the county to restore more polling places for the November election and staff them with bilingual workers who can help Navajo speakers.

“A lot of Navajos don’t understand the mail-in ballot,” said Filfred, a member of the Navajo Nation Council, part of tribal government. “They would rather go to a polling place. That’s what they’re accustomed to, and they want that back.”

The battle has reignited long-festering tensions between tribal members and other residents in a rural county that sits in the Four Corners region of the West and covers the northern tip of the Navajo Nation that is mostly in Arizona and New Mexico.

Similar legal clashes have been waged recently in Nevada, Montana and the Dakotas over a variety of issues involving the Voting Rights Act, including access to polling places as well as unreliable U.S. mail service on reservations.

San Juan County, Utah officials defend the new system, saying it led to higher voter participation in 2014. They accuse the Navajo plaintiffs of fabricating the claims in the lawsuit in an attempt to control local politics.

The injunction request is “gamesmanship” that glosses over the fact that the county plans to open four polling places in November, including three on the reservation, just as it did for the June primary election, said attorney Jesse Trentadue in a court filing, representing the county. They will be staffed with Navajo translators. The June primary came four months after the lawsuit was filed.

Forcing the county to devote more resources to the election would negatively impact other county programs, he said.

“What plaintiffs are asking for is not the same opportunity to participate in the election process as that enjoyed by all voters,” Trentadue wrote. “To the contrary, plaintiffs are asking for much more, which is neither required nor permitted under the Voting Rights Act.”

The county lost to the Navajo Nation earlier this year in a different election policy clash when a federal judge ordered San Juan County to redraw the boundaries of its election districts after ruling that it had violated equal protection for American Indians. The tribe argued in a lawsuit filed in 2012 that the county’s decision to maintain a decades-old boundary was racially motivated.

In Nevada, tribal leaders asked a federal judge earlier this month to order that state and two counties to establish satellite polling places on reservations where they say Native Americans are being denied an equal opportunity to vote in the November elections.

Two Paiute tribes accuse the secretary of state and the counties of discriminating by illegally refusing tribe members voting access afforded to people in wealthier, mostly white neighborhoods. Members of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe living in Washoe County say they must travel 96 miles roundtrip to register to vote or to cast ballots in person.

In 2014 in Alaska, a federal judge ordered the state to do more to help Native language speakers understand their ballots after voters argued voting materials in both Yup’ik and Gwich’in were inaccurately translated and poorly distributed.

Historical discrimination against Navajos in San Juan County, Utah is well-documented, leading many tribal members to avoid going to mostly-white cities like Monticello, said John Mejia, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah who represents the Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission. That’s why the judge should intervene and ensure Navajos have equal opportunity to vote, he argued in a court brief.

Marilyn Holly, a 62-year-old Navajo, doesn’t mind sending in a ballot by mail but said she’s heard from many senior citizen tribal members who don’t understand how it works and instead just skip voting.

Filfred said bringing back polling places is an obvious solution to ensure everybody can cast a ballot in person near their homes.

“If you take that away from them, you’re messing with their voting rights,” Filfred said.

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Associated Press writer Scott Sonner contributed to this story from Reno, Nevada.