Tag Navajo: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Tag Navajo ballot is and who runs it

Tag Navajo is the name this directory gives to the Navajo Ballots tag maintained by Indian Country Today, the Native-led, independent and nonprofit newsroom whose masthead appears on every page of ictnews.org. The ballot URL is not a branded contest microsite. It is a tag archive on the publisher's own domain, the address a reader reaches when following ICT's coverage of Navajo ballot news.

Several facts set the program apart from a typical reader's-choice ballot. The organizer is a newsroom rather than a chamber of commerce or a lifestyle magazine. The host is the publisher's own domain, so nothing about the ballot depends on a third-party voting platform. And the market is statewide South Dakota, with no city attached to the program in any published material.

The directory files this program under the best-of vertical: coverage grouped around ballot topics rather than a fixed slate of local businesses. The table below collects the identifying facts in a single place.

Because ICT hosts the page itself, a supporter who wants the primary source types the ICT address directly rather than routing through a voting platform. That structural fact explains most of what follows on this page: the window, the recurrence and the gaps all flow from how ICT itself publishes the tag.

The dated history behind the Navajo Ballots tag

The dated history for this program is short and specific. Edition years logged for the Navajo Ballots tag are 2022 and 2025, which is what qualifies Tag Navajo as an annual program in this directory. The logged voting window for the 2025 cycle runs through November, logged as opening November 1 and closing November 30.

The archive page itself backs those years with dated journalism. Items dated November 4, 2022 and November 28, 2025 sit in the tag's coverage, among them a Votebeat report describing how voters in a county see their ballots rejected more frequently, and reporting on advocates who want to replace precinct-based voting. Those item dates are the concrete anchors behind the edition years.

Recurrence points to a next expected run in 2026, though ICT has not printed a forward calendar for the tag. What the outlet does not publish on this page is equally part of the picture: ICT prints no day-level open or close dates beyond the November month, no category list, no per-supporter vote rule and no eligibility text anywhere on the tag; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

Read practically, the picture is simple. November is the month to watch, 2022 and 2025 are the years already logged, and anything more precise than that has to come from ICT's own page rather than from this summary.

How a supporter uses the Navajo Ballots page today

The mechanic this directory logs for Tag Navajo is a public vote, and the place it lives is the tag archive on ictnews.org. Following the ballot starts at the tag URL, where the reader finds what ICT has published. The page is a plain archive: a masthead with a search bar, a sign-in link for ICT members, navigation into Politics and News sections, and a running list of tagged items below.

Because ICT hosts the page on its own domain, there is no third-party ballot form to fill in and no platform account separate from an ICT sign-in. A reader who wants to comment, donate or subscribe uses the controls ICT prints on the page itself; the masthead carries a Donate button alongside the sign-in link. What the tag page does not do is gate its coverage behind any action: the archive is open to read.

The literal sequence is short. Open the tag address, scan the dated items, open the pieces that match the ballot question at hand, and use the site search if a specific topic, such as precinct voting or county-level ballot rejections, is the target. During the November window, repeat the visit, because that is when the directory logs ballot activity for this program.

Nobody needs an account to read the archive. The sign-in link exists for ICT's own member features, not for access to the tagged coverage, which keeps the barrier to following this ballot as low as the organizer can make it.

Where Tag Navajo sits among South Dakota ballots

South Dakota's ballot directory holds a cluster of reader's-choice programs, and Tag Navajo differs from every sibling in the same direction. The siblings are branded best-of ballots: 605 Magazine Best of South Dakota, Best of Mitchell, CommunityVotes Rapid City, CommunityVotes Sioux Falls, Rapid City Journal Best of the Black Hills and Rapid City Journal Readers' Choice. Each carries a publisher brand and a market name in its title.

Tag Navajo is not that shape. Its organizer is a Native-led newsroom, its host is the publisher's own domain, and its page is a news tag rather than a branded contest microsite. A reader arriving from a sibling page should expect dated coverage instead of a category slate.

The contrast runs the other way too. The siblings give a supporter a clear competitive act inside a named market, while the Navajo Ballots tag gives a reader reporting to follow. That is why the directory logs this program's mechanic as a public vote anchored to the tag page rather than to a nomination form.

Geography separates them as well. Best of Mitchell belongs to Mitchell, CommunityVotes Rapid City to Rapid City, and the Rapid City Journal programs to the Black Hills. Tag Navajo carries no city; its market is South Dakota statewide, tied to the organizer's coverage rather than to any town's chamber or magazine. For readers comparing options across the state, the sibling pages are the right next stops, and 605 Magazine Best of South Dakota is the sibling whose statewide scope sits closest to this program's own market.

Strengthening support around the Navajo Ballots tag

Support for this program looks different from support for a chamber ballot, because the ballot is a news tag on ictnews.org rather than a category form. The practical levers are attention and timing: share the tagged coverage while the November window is live, and point readers at the specific items that matter to the ballot question they care about, such as precinct voting or county-level rejections.

ICT prints no stated position on outside voting help on the tag page, so anyone weighing paid support should first read the rules ICT itself publishes and then start from our guide on getting more votes online. The same caution applies to any ballot: an organizer's rules outrank general advice, and this program's rules text is not published on the tag. For the broader question of whether purchased support is lawful in programs shaped like this, see our legality page.