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Navajo Nation ballot initiative receives too little support to pass
Associated Press Writer
It's really an injustice to the people. We're not treating our people right by our government. We've got to do something
- Joe Shirley, Navajo president
The latest effort was closer than any other - but still failed.
Navajo President Joe Shirley Jr. sought to have tribal members vote to reduce the 88-member Tribal Council and give the president a line-item veto. Petition circulators garnered the required number of signatures, but tribal officials declared in November that not enough were valid for the initiatives to go before voters.
Getting an initiative on the ballot is a basic election maneuver that one generally can do easily in cities and states off the reservation.
It is important because it allows citizens to bypass lawmakers in cases where a majority believe their views aren't being carried out - or when a powerful politician can't get a legislative body to go along with his plans.
But it is notoriously difficult to get an initiative in front of Navajo Nation voters.
The signature requirement on the vast reservation is among the highest in the country, and some are questioning whether it's nearly impossible for a tribal member to change the law. Still others say anyone with a strong support base, money and the drive to push an issue could get it done.
Tribal members have played a small part in establishing laws through referendums, which are placed on the ballot by the Tribal Council. Since 1994, five referendums have gone before voters, three of which asked whether the tribe should establish gaming.
For an initiative, Navajo law requires the signatures of 15 percent of those registered to vote with the tribe, which meant Shirley had to collect more than 16,500 signatures for each initiative. If enough had been verified, Shirley would have faced another major hurdle, having to gain a majority vote in each of the tribe's 110 precincts, a requirement he has disputed.
"It's really an injustice to the people," he said. "We're not treating our people right by our government. We've got to do something. We've got to continue to work on it and make changes such that the people do have input, that the people are involved."
About half of the U.S. states allow citizens to gather signatures to place initiatives on the ballot. The signature requirements range from 2 to 15 percent, though most are in the 5 to 8 percent range, said John Matsusaka, president of the Initiative and Referendum Institute at University of Southern California.
"If you get over 10 percent, you have to start to wonder whether it's worth even having it," he said.
In the three states that include parts of the Navajo Nation, only New Mexico does not allow for initiatives. Navajo officials say the tribe's requirements were modeled after Arizona's, which requires 10 percent for ballot initiatives and 15 percent for constitutional amendments. The Navajo Nation doesn't have a constitution.
Along with Shirley, Tohatchi Chapter president Larson Man-uelito and Navajo attorney John Chapela also have pushed ballot initiatives on the Navajo Nation.
Manuelito, who advocated against a tribal takeover of U.S. Indian Health Service hospitals on the reservation, called his effort a "nice exercise of trying to test the government."
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