An online vote to determine North Dakota’s nickname will be held from Oct. 19-23, according to a report in the Grand Forks Herald.
The vote will open at 8 a.m. CDT on Oct. 19 and close at midnight on Oct. 23.
Voters will choose between Fighting Hawks, Nodaks, North Stars, Roughriders and Sundogs. Continuing to play as UND or North Dakota is not included in the vote.
Those individuals able to vote are current UND students, faculty and staff, retirees, alumni, donors and season ticket holders. If a person fits into more than one voter category, they are still only allowed just one vote.
The school’s Fighting Sioux logo was retired several years back after the NCAA threatened sanctions.
“We wanted to make sure before settling on a final date [for the vote] that the mailing cards were out there and the process was moving and these groups of people who were getting mailings and responding were able to do that, and responses are coming in,” UND vice president for university and public affairs Susan Walton said in the article.
UND spokesman Peter Johnson told the Herald that there will not be an option for voters to write in a nickname idea of their own.
The vote will be conducted by Qualtrics, an external survey technology provider, and results should be released the week following the vote.
If any nickname receives more than 50 percent of votes, it will be recognized as the new nickname, but if no name receives more than that percentage, another runoff vote will be held between the two with the most votes, according to the Herald, and that winner will be the new nickname.
“In some ways it’s the final piece of the puzzle people have been looking for,” Johnson added.
