Opinion | Politics

Editorial: Making the Native vote count in the November election

Friday, September 16, 2016

Making the numbers count on this election

Making the numbers count on this election
By Native Sun News Today Editorial Board
nsweekly.com

It is puzzling that we, American Indians, do not utilize the numbers we have in our favor when it comes to local, state and national elections.

The vote has always been the power broker in the white society. It is the power of their vote that has kept the Indian people powerless.

We, as a people, have not been able to use the power of our numbers to bring about change simply because we do not use the power of our vote effectively.

A few national elections ago Tim Johnson ran against John Thune for the U. S. Senate. As the votes were counted, mostly from the eastern and central parts of South Dakota because of the time zone differences, Thune and his followers felt they had an insurmountable lead because there were just a couple of precincts left to be counted and they were on the Indian reservations. They were all relaxed and ready to pop the corks on the champagne when the voting results from Pine Ridge and Rosebud began to roll in.

Voila! The Lakota voters had turned out for this particular election in large numbers and the count soon changed and the Indian vote helped to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat for Tim Johnson. We had the numbers and we made them count.

This should hold true for elections we often to not pay much attention to and those elections are for the city council, county commissioners, mayor, state representatives and state senators. All of these elective positions will eventually hold sway over our future. It is time we place some of our own people in these positions in order to bring us representation where there is none.

We do have the numbers. If we stick together and vote as a block we can help determine who will be are next elected officials and that includes the national seats of president and members of Congress and the Senate. Native Sun News Today throws its support behind Paula Hawks for Congress and Jay Williams for the U. S. Senate. We will have more on both of these candidates as we draw closer to the election.

So stay tuned because as we said, we got the power and it is time to use it.