Lawrence Lewis

Inside a particular First Nation Custom Election Code it is silent on how names should be placed on the official BALLOT for the election of its government…as an Electoral Officer these types of absent regulations and procedures make me cringe…not because a challenge here under an appeal has any hope of being successful, but because inevitably someone is going to be upset about how their name is listed on the BALLOT.  For those of us from Indian Country we know and understand the complexities of our naming conventions…I was 30 years old before learned the real names of most of my uncles…and then only because I was the Band Manager of my Nation and didn’t know who half the people were on our  INAC Indian Registry, lol!  In this real case example though, the Electoral Officer is forced to select some standard and impose this preference on how names are listed precisely because the Code is silent…to make matters worse there were Candidates who wanted to rearrange the sequence of their names and others who demanded that alias’ (the names by which some Candidates were only known) not be permitted on the Ballot at all…in the end I selected a convention that looked like this – First Name, (Alias), Middle Initial(s), Last Name.  Of course, someone was still upset and threatened to sue me…funny how we have become a litigious people, even if ignorant to the practicality and application of this threat?  The point here though is that if a First Nation Custom Election Code is silent on a salient matter like how names are to be listed on an official BALLOT…and the Electoral Officer is forced to make a decision and impose a process or standard…then the democratic and custom processes envisioned by the people of that Nation are in effect removed and replaced by a foreign authority – and that feels like an Indian Agent of old to me!  What are your thoughts on this topic?

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Lawrence Lewis

“I don’t care what you say about me. Just be sure to spell my name wrong.” – Barbra Streisand