Jourdan Bennett-Begaye
ICT
Election season is one of my favorite times of the year in the ICT newsroom. It’s chaotic and full of adrenaline.
Saying it’s one of my favorite times as a journalist is funny because I used to despise politics. But a friend once told me that as a Native person, “we are born political.”
The other part of election season I absolutely love is ICT’s election night live newscast. This is the sixth live election show, the only broadcast that talks Indigenous politics and, if you ask me, how it plays into and intertwines with American politics. And it’s all live TV.
I remember the day our former editor, Mark Trahant, made it happen back in 2018. ICT was owned by the National Congress of American Indians at the time and we were housed in the basement of its Washington DC embassy. I was reporting at my desk and Mark gets up and says something along the lines of, “I’m going to ask if we can spend money we don’t have.”
I laughed. He walked upstairs.
Mark wrote it best in his Substack this week:
“It was six weeks before the election — and I saw that moment as historical (the election that sent Deb Haaland and Sharice Davids to Congress) but we really didn’t have the money to go forward. ICT was still owned by NCAI at that point and I remember walking into (then executive director) Jackie Pata’s office explaining that I was going to spend $60,000 that we didn’t have for election night. Green light,” he wrote.
It’s been quite a time since. Six election night live broadcasts. We improve every time and learn from each one.
IF YOU WATCH…
Join us on Nov. 3 for three hours of live result updates, Indigenous candidate interviews, reports from correspondents in the field, and experts talk about issues impacting Indian Country, and us looking ahead to 2028.
The show will be hosted by Antonia Gonzales with experts: Chris James, Mike Stopp, and Mark Trahant. Of course, we are hosting it with our partner, FNX.
We’ll have reporters on the ground from New York to Arizona giving you updates from campaigns across all of ICT’s platforms, so give us a follow, along with our digital team updating stories at ictnews.org.
WHAT: Native Vote 2026
WHEN: Tuesday, November 3
TIME: 6-9 p.m. Pacific / 9 p.m.-midnight Eastern
WHERE: FNX Television, YouTube, ictnews.org
