Election clerks and observers await the ballot count decision on September 23.
By LORI ANN EDMO
Sho-Ban News
FORT HALL — Ballots for the Mountain Home Economic Development project referendum were not counted September 23 because the Shoshone-Bannock Tribal Election Board said the 797 vote threshold wasn’t reached because 601 voters cast ballots.
Fort Hall Business Council Chairman Nathan Small said the tribal membership voted at the Annual Meeting to have the referendum vote. He said there was precedence in the past on referendums where ballots weren’t counted if the voting threshold wasn’t reached. “Had we reached that threshold we would still be sitting here counting them.” He thanked all the workers and the Fort Hall Police Department too.
“More than likely we are going to continue to move forward with the project in Mountain Home because had they met the threshold and had they been able to count the ballots that they didn’t want it that would have been the mandate,” Chairman Small said. “Because of the way things worked out, we will probably start moving forward. Right now we’ve been working on getting the land into trust out there.” However he said it’s still not a 100 percent guarantee to get what we want out there. “There’s still a process we have to go through so it’s not done yet.” He said it may be a couple years. The economic study done on it indicated if and when it gets going, “We could be netting around $200 million a year, which is quite a bit,” he continued. He said the current operation over here hasn’t been meeting all of the requirements of this tribe.
Small noted the Tribal Business Center probably has less than ten years before it’s probably going to be condemned or before it falls in just like the other side. “There’s a lot of things that this tribe needs and I think the only way is when we get that going out there, if we get that revenue from out there and bring it here it will help out a lot more.” He said there is so much needs out here and we just can’t meet it all the time. “Hopefully in a few years we can meet everybody’s needs, creating jobs and stuff like that,” Small said, “We will look to the future and a lot better one.”
The Tribal Election Board utilized a voter management system in iPads for the first time where clerks were able to verify eligible tribal voters and have them sign electronically and Vivian Wahtomy, TEB chairperson commended the clerks for learning how to use the iPads.