<\/p>\n
Students and a professor from University of Colorado Boulder collaborated with members of the Ute Mountain Ute tribe to create a video describing the state\u2019s mail-in voting process leading up to the Nov. 8 election.<\/p>\n
The Towaoc polling station closed in 2013 when Colorado began mail-in voting. Concerned with how this might impact voter turnout, tribal members partnered with CU Boulder law professor Carla Fredericks and law students to create a 15-minute video webinar about mail-in voting that is available to the reservation\u2019s 1,087 residents and the 640 registered voters.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were not asked about the value of the polling place in the community,\u201d said Bernadette Cuthair, the tribe\u2019s community services director. \u201cPeople used to go to the polling place, and staff would explain the process at the polling place, and we are lacking that now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Peter Ortego, the tribe\u2019s general counsel, said its closure was not well communicated.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think this will come as a surprise to many tribal members, not to mention people throughout the county,\u201d Ortego said.<\/p>\n
Fredericks and students Derik Goatson, Johanna Kron and Julia LaManna came up with the idea of the webinar.<\/p>\n
\u201cNative Americans don\u2019t vote as much as the rest of the population,\u201d Fredericks said. \u201cIf they aren\u2019t voting in the national election, that\u2019s problematic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cuthair said tribal officials have stressed the importance of this election and the impact Native votes will have over the last six months. Still, some are in the dark on how the process works, she said.<\/p>\n
Cuthair said she hopes to see a ballot drop-off location in Towaoc.<\/p>\n
The webinar explains how to register to vote, provides voting and mailing instructions, and identifies the closest polling places and who to contact with questions. The students also worked with Native Vote and Common Cause \u2013 nonpartisan groups focused on voter awareness \u2013 to create the video and a brochure.<\/p>\n
The project was funded through an Outreach Award, which supports programs that connect research, teaching and creative work with public needs in ways that impact communities.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnytime we can get a young group of people from the reservation together with people outside the reservation to impact native people, that\u2019s powerful,\u201d Cuthair said.<\/p>\n
Journal reporter Jacob Klopfenstein contributed to this story.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" students created webinar about mail-in voting<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":68324,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,308,60,144,547],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-68323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-local-elections","tag-montezuma-county","tag-towaoc","tag-ute-mountain-ute-indian-tribe"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68323","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=68323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68323\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68323"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=68323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}