Cherokee Nation Constitutional Vote (more)
Two more analysis posts on the March 3rd special election.
John Balkin wrote Who is A Cherokee? And Who Decides?, which is mostly recycled WaPo non-analytic copy.
Jami Johnson responded with substantial corrections in email, which Professor Balkin was good enough to post as a guest piece as More on the Expulsion of the Cherokee Freedmen.
Its a good read. Cherokees vote for Indian blood.
What caught my eye first, since I look at voter lists and turn out and actually care about, as in want to win, the June 23rd election, is what isn't there. The author has contested and won several elections, two over the CNO-wide voter demographic, and in three months will be in the GOTV phase of his third contest and ...
He can't put down the numbers that matter. The only numbers he can put down is 77%. What is missing is that CNO elections are decided by a voting population of 35,000 registered voters out of an eligible population seven times larger. Three fourths of 13% is ... about 1 Tsalagi in 10. But it was only 7,000 votes ... about 0.028%. Not the stuff of election giants.
Seven Dems in ten think that health care is the number one domestic priority. One in ten think immigration is the number one domestic priority. 7,000 votes out of a quarter of a million is less support than "traditional values" has among Democrats.
I haven't had the time to look at the election results, and fundamentally, they aren't going to matter in the June 23rd election, which will affect issues other than skin tone. But its good to know that when the two-term incumbent Principal Chief puts pen to paper to describe his greatest near-term accomplishment, his "October Surprise", he's not confident enough in the people and the institution of election to risk giving name to numbers. I'd be far more concerned about the success of the campaign by Justice Stacy Leeds for Principal Chief, if Principal Chief Chad Smith wrote quantitatively rather than qualitatively, if he named his margins rather than resorting to standard hack puffery to spin his results.