Montana

So, this is it.  South Dakota and Montana have their primaries today, bringing primary season to a close.

In a normal year, this wouldn’t be a noteworthy landmark.  But this year… pundits, professional and amateur, have been waiting to be able to breathe a sigh of relief.

It’s a shame I’m going to be in meetings all day.   There’s an expectation that a steady trickle of superdelegate endorsements will be made today and tomorrow.  I’ve got to believe that someone (probably the Obama campaign) will have a running tally going, so that the blogosphere can melt down when he clinches the nomination, this evening or tomorrow.

Since I encountered the report of Barak Obama having been formally adopted into the Crow Nation, on a campaign trip through Montana, I have been searching like mad trying to find the name he was given.

Major news sources all happily report that his new honorary name is “One Who Helps People Throughout the Land”, and his adopted family name is “Black Eagle”…but reports on the actual Apsáalooke name are few and far between.

I finally found it at ABC’s Political Radar Blog: Awe Kooda bilaxpak Kuuxshish

Sadly, my Google-fu is not strong enough to find the Apsáalooke term for “Black Eagle”.

So, it appears that “Lakota Oyate” are continuing on with their redeclaration of independence.   The map on the left now appears on the group’s website, along with an interesting press release:

Property ownership in the five state area of Lakota now takes center stage. Parts of North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana have been illegally homesteaded for years despite knowledge of Lakota as predecessor sovereign [historic owner]. Lakota representatives say if the United States does not enter into immediate diplomatic negotiations, liens will be filed on real estate transactions in the five state region, clouding title over literally thousands of square miles of land and property.

Well, I suppose that’s one way to grab folks’ attention — kill the real estate market, and trigger a court battle that they’re likely to fail (presumably over some question as to whether the Lakota Freedom folks are the appropriate representatives of the Lakota Nation, as well as failure to adequately exercise their claim in years previous), but I respect the chutzpah.

Seen in the Helena Independent Record:

Helena resident Joe Hollowell said he mailed in his ballot this year, voting for the first time in about a decade.

If he hadn’t received his ballot in his mailbox this fall, he likely wouldn’t have voted, he said.

Officials are calling this year’s city election a success, and several city commissioners said they would be willing to give the mailbox poll another go-round in years to come.

Voter turnout reached a jaw-dropping 61.5 percent, higher than any city vote in the past three decades and almost double the turnout in 2005, when 30.9 percent of Helena voters visited traditional polling stations.

I realize that there are plenty of folks who have at least some reasonable reservations to the idea of voting by mail, including concerns about fraud and voter identification.

However, I can’t help but think about the expense involved in operating polling stations, the lost productivity from standing on line, issues with disabled folks voting (my wife was literally in tears because election day fell on one of her bad days, and she wasn’t physically able to head over to the neighborhood fire station)…. Plus, higher rates of voter turnout are generally seen as a net positive for society (setting aside “bread and circus” concerns).

I wish more jurisdictions would consider vote-by-mail.