Lutsel K'e to re-do election
New date to cast ballots for chief announced today
Kassina Ryder
Northern News Services
Published Monday, March 31, 2014
LUTSEL K'E/SNOWDRIFT
Lutsel K'e Dene First Nation will hold a new election to determine its chief, the band council decided last week.
"In a nutshell, the election committee decided there was a need for a new election," said Graeme Drew, Lutsel Ke's senior administrative officer, band manager and chief electoral officer during the March 14 election.
Archie Catholique was determined the winner of the election, but a recount on March 22 discovered there was actually a tie between Catholique and Felix Lockhart. Both candidates had 63 votes.
Last week, according to Drew, council decided the original election results would be abandoned and a new election for chief would take place.
Council is expected to announce the new election date on March 31 and Drew said he expects it would take place in early May.
All candidates from the previous election and new candidates are eligible to run, he added.
"We would repeat the whole cycle of the 28 day election process from the day the election is announced," he said.
The community also still needs to hold its election to decide band councillors; Drew said council decided not to combine the elections for chief and council members, but will hold the elections on different dates.
"The feedback was they still wanted to continue to keep them separate and perhaps collapse or reduce the time in between the two," he said.
Drew said councillors discussed the possibility of holding the elections back-to-back, such as on a Friday and a Saturday. He said council is also expected to make that decision this week.
"That's another thing that council's kind of taken under consideration and they'll make a decision on that on Monday," he said.
Monday is also Drew's final day as band manager. He is leaving the community and has trained someone from Lutsel K'e to take over his position. He said he has offered to assist the community during the transition.
"That happens to be the day that my work term ends here so it's a little bit unfortunate as far as timing because I would obviously like to see this through to the end," he said.
He also said two spots on the election committee will be open during the new election, as two members will be out of the community during that time. Council is also expected to appoint two members to fill in and a new electoral officer on Monday.
Drew said this was the first election during which the community used its new election code. He said the experience encouraged council members to develop a manual to help make the code clearer.
"The other thing that council is going to ensure is that a procedure's manual be prepared to accompany the election code," he said.
Current chief, Dora Enzoe, and council will stay until the new chief is announced. As was the case during the last election, people will have five days to dispute the results to the electoral officer and the elections committee.
