{"id":30828,"date":"2023-11-04T18:28:28","date_gmt":"2023-11-05T00:28:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/after-vote-recount-wall-is-sworn-in-to-third-term-as-a-ute-councilman\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T01:27:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T07:27:15","slug":"after-vote-recount-wall-is-sworn-in-to-third-term-as-a-ute-councilman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/after-vote-recount-wall-is-sworn-in-to-third-term-as-a-ute-councilman\/","title":{"rendered":"After vote recount, Wall is sworn in to third term as a Ute councilman"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The
The Ute Mountain Ute Tribe council with young tribal leaders.<\/span>Joseph Williams<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

After winning reelection by just six votes, Lyndreth Wall was sworn in Friday for a third term as councilman for the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not here to play. I\u2019m here to do what needs to be done,\u201d Wall, 57, said at the ceremony. \u201cI want to be a team member, a team leader, with people that are going to make a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Lyndreth
Lyndreth Wall was reelected as a councilman for the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe.<\/span>Joseph Williams<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Leland Collins, who is running unopposed in District D to take over Wall\u2019s spot on the Montezuma-Cortez RE-1 Board of Education, and Anthony Bancroft ran against Wall.<\/p>\n

The election was held Oct. 16. After the initial count, Wall was ahead of Collins and Bancroft by a vote of 98 to 94 and 26, respectively, according to results provided by the Ute Mountain Election Board. Given Wall\u2019s small margin of victory, a recount was held on Oct. 24, which certified Wall as the winner.<\/p>\n

In the final tally, Wall had 109 votes, while Collins had 103 and Bancroft had 30. For Wall, the results were a reminder that collaboration is the most important job of a tribal councilman.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe always need to improve our relationships with our members,\u201d he told The Journal<\/em> in a phone interview after Friday\u2019s ceremony. \u201cI want to make sure that our policies are prominent and move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Other leaders also highlighted the need to share the tribe\u2019s accomplishments more broadly.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to tell our story,\u201d said Chairman Manuel Heart. \u201cFrom boarding school, to water, to economic development; the three Ute tribes are leading tribes in this country in all areas.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Wall, It wasn\u2019t just the margin of victory that was noteworthy in the recent election. In total, just 242 ballots were counted, not counting those deemed invalid, just 14.23% of the tribe\u2019s over 1,700 eligible voters, according to Wall.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a lot of voters out there and it didn\u2019t really show,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The tribe will seek to make changes to the election process before votes are cast next October, according to Heart, including potentially switching to a preliminary runoff system.<\/p>\n

While Wall won reelection to the council, he lost the position of secretary to Darwin Whiteman Jr. by a vote of 4-3. Alston Turtle was elected as treasurer, while Selwyn Whiteskunk was appointed vice chairman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

a recount, Wall beats challenger Leland Collins in the October election by six votes <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30829,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[266,28,308,29,547],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-30828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-election","tag-headlines","tag-local-elections","tag-newsletter","tag-ute-mountain-ute-indian-tribe"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30828"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81220,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30828\/revisions\/81220"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30828"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=30828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}