On Wednesday, September 29th, 2021 the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe (SRST) held their general election. Five days later on October 4th, 2021, official results from SRST revealed that Janet Alkire was elected as tribal chairperson. We do not yet know why the official results were not revealed until more than four days after voting took place, and we recognize that many SRST community members have questions regarding differences in the unofficial and official results.

After the unofficial results were announced on the SRST Facebook page late on Wednesday night, our team immediately noticed something was off with the numbers reported for the Long Soldier district. In the unofficial results, 517 total votes were counted for the Office of Vice Chairman. However, only 449 total votes were counted for the Office of Chairperson. We do not know why only 449 total votes for the Office of Chairperson were counted, but if we look at the totals from all other districts, we can see that the difference of 68 votes simply did not make sense.

Some might think that fewer votes were counted for the Office of Chairperson in Long Soldier because not every voter wanted to vote for that office position specifically. While this is not impossible, it is very unlikely that 13% of the total voters in the Long Soldier district decided to not vote at all for the Office of Chairperson. Looking at all other districts' unofficial results, we can see there was only a difference of one or two votes between the total votes counted for vice chairman and chairperson, with an average of only a one vote difference across all districts except for Long Soldier.

Still, others might think that Long Soldier is just an exception, but a look at the official primary election results from July of 2021 show that they are not. In the primary election, the Long Soldier district had no difference in the total number of votes counted for the office of chairperson and vice chairman. In fact, we again see the average difference in these two numbers across all eight districts is only one vote. This only further proves that a difference of 68 is extremely unlikely to be accurate.

Again, we do not know why those 68 votes were not accounted for in the unofficial results, but we do see them show up in the official results published five days later on October 4th, 2021. In the official results, the Long Soldier district no longer has a difference of 68 votes between their total votes counted for the office of chairperson and office of vice chairman. Although five votes is still the largest difference of any district in both the primary and general election, it is much more reasonable. Some people have wondered how Janet Alkire won the election by 67 votes in the official results, but we can see that those votes likely came from the uncounted votes in Long Soldier.

In the official results, the Long Soldier district reports 72 additional votes counted for the office of chairperson (the total increased from 449 to 521). We do not know why those 72 votes were not counted in the unofficial results. Were they absentee ballots not counted in the unofficial but counted in the official? Were they valid ballots incorrectly placed in the spoiled ballot envelope? Again, we cannot say. But we do hope that all enrolled members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe will be informed about why there were such large differences between the official and unofficial results reported for the Long Soldier district.

Respectfully,

The Janet Alkire for Chairwoman Campaign Team