There’s an alarming headline this week in the Navajo Times: 192 Navajo Nation candidates disqualified from ballot.
That’s right. Nearly 200 candidates have been kicked off the ballot on the nation’s largest reservation — including chapter presidents, school board members and grazing officials. At least for now.
You can trace it back to a new law enacted by the Navajo Nation Council that strengthens campaign finance reporting rules on the reservation. All candidates were required to submit their campaign expense reports by Aug. 9. But, a whole lot of them didn’t — and now we’re seeing the results.
Candidates do have a chance to file grievances about the process and potentially be allowed to stay on the ballot, but no word on where that stands yet.
Donovan Quintero has been covering the story for the Navajo Times. The Show spoke to him Thursday about where it all stands and what it could mean.
Full conversation
DONOVAN QUINTERO: Well, according to the Navajo Board of Election Supervisor Chairperson Melvin Harrison, previous years, the election office has attempted to really encourage, enforce the law to tell the candidates that they need to turn in their expense reports. And according to Harrison, they had a tough time. It wasn't really enforceable and the cases that they sent to the prosecutor's office were dropped only because they weren't enforceable.
So the law was introduced and sponsored by a gentleman by the name of Danny Simpson. He is a Council Navigation Council delegate and that was eventually passed by the council and it was signed by Navigation President Buu Nygren on Feb. 2.
LAUREN GILGER: OK. So there are these new laws that really put some very strict, it sounds like, repercussions for candidates who do not file their campaign finance reports on time. What are the sort of downsides for candidates who don't do this?
QUINTERO: Well, according to some of the candidates I've spoken to, they say that they weren't properly informed, they didn't get proper notification, that when they did sign the paperwork, when they were getting the paperwork process, they basically said that the election officials didn't say, “hey, by the way, there's a new law that we are going to be enforcing and it's going to be really strict.”
And then of course, it sounds like there's also some confusion whether, you know, some candidates were confused about what they meant by 10 days or 10 working days. So that was another one that they had issues with the way the administration, election administration handled, it may have been a little extreme according to some of the candidates because you know, why disqualify everyone, right?
GILGER: I mean, 192 candidates disqualified as a whole lot of people. What kind of impact could that have on the election itself?
QUINTERO: That's a great question. That's one question. I'm still sifting through right now, but from what I've been gathering, a chapter president official basically has 20 different responsibilities, which vary from really important issues. I'm not sure if you're aware of how the process works out here.
But in order to get a piece of land, a little over an acre of land for an average person to get that kind of land, they have to go begin this application process because they call it the home site lease process and that process can take anywhere from a year to 10 years to complete and for that paperwork to go through, they have to work with the chapter that goes from the chapter president. It also goes to the grazing official who is also an elected official and those folks who are also disqualified as well.
GILGER: Right.
QUINTERO: So these are really big implications. I did ask Melvin Harrison what that means if, if let's say all the candidates from a particular chapter were all disqualified, how long will it take for those people to be replaced? He said that they're going to hold a special election in February.
So it sounds like folks will not have any representation for about a month. That said I am going to be visiting covering one of the candidates who they're going to hold a rally today at 6:30 p.m. So I'll be over there this evening.
GILGER: So this is turning into quite an issue on the reservation. Lots of people are aware that this has happened, this might change for some of those candidates. How are they able to sort of file a grievance, you know, say something like I didn't have time and I'm, I'll do it now, kind of thing.
QUINTERO: Yes. Well, so they received their letters about a week ago, they had to file their grievance reports by Monday. And again, that's where some of the confusion came in. They thought that, you know, it was, was it 10 days, it was 10 working days. So, but that said they, you know, the deadline was on Monday at 5 p.m. And what was interesting about that was that they filed with the Navajo Nation Office of Hearings and Appeals or OHA. Those folks were at a work session in Albuquerque on the deadline day, Monday.
So the hearing officer said that he has 10 days from, I guess, from 5 p.m. Monday to look through all the documents, all the grievances that were filed and he didn't say how many and then he'll deny those that he feels need to be denied. And of course, the ones he'll push forward for hearings for hearings.
GILGER: So there are some steps still to be had. Let me ask you about the original motivation from the Navajo Council to change these rules right, to make them much more strict, to encourage the candidates to actually submit their campaign finance report. It was about leveling the playing field.
QUINTERO: Basically. According to Mr Harrison, the reason for this is because in the past, they've tried to get candidates to file their expense reports. They also included in that too, that they have a stipulation that each candidate not spend more than little over $8,700 during your, during your campaigning. So I guess you could say that will level the playing field so that one candidate does not spend a lot of money and then kind of get more play time on the radio and whatnot.
GILGER: Yeah. OK. So let me just ask you lastly then, Donovan, since this is so in flux, what are you watching for next? Do you think it's possible that these nearly 200 candidates who have been disqualified at this point could be significantly reduced or are you seeing a big hole on the ballot coming up here in November?
QUINTERO: I'm anticipating that there's going to be a number of candidates who will be disqualified. I'm not going to say most of them. I will say quite a few of them will be disqualified. I don't think the whole chapters will lose all of their candidates. Certainly, I think quite a few of them will be.
I'm just thinking about the incumbents who say they've had so many important projects going on that they've, that has, has taken them years to just get to this point, you know, to be able to have a smooth working process now that they're disqualified and that, you know, if their grievance is not, if it's denied, then they will be ineligible to run for five years. And they fear that all the hard work that they put into the programs that they began are going to go away because if someone else comes in, they don't know what's going to happen.
