Navajo Nation voters on Tuesday approved a change to the election code that would give the Navajo people the say over whether or not candidates for official offices speak and understand the language well enough to hold office.

The vote was tight, with 13,017 voting to change the language requirements and 11,778 voting to keep them the same.

Current Navajo law says candidates for the Nation’s highest offices, including president and vice president, must speak fluent Navajo.

The language requirement was the crux of an argument against former Navajo presidential candidate Chris Deschene, who was barred from running for office in the official presidential election because he was deemed not-fluent in Navajo despite winning the presidential primary election.

The new rules will go into effect starting with the 2018 election.

Lawmakers approved the vote after changes to the fluency requirement failed through other legislation.

More than 122,000 Navajos were registered to vote Tuesday, but only 21 percent of them voted.

The Navajo Nation Supreme Court on Friday ordered the Navajo Election Administration to hold a presidential general election “as soon as possible” with Joe Shirley, Jr. and Russell Begaye as the candidates. It also ordered the Election Administration to hold elections for the Navajo Board of Election Supervisors whose seats were invalidated in an Oct. 31 decision, but stopped at holding them in contempt of court.

The orders came in the invalidations of two Navajo Nation Council resolutions – CD-80-14 and CD-81-14 – the first of which called for a primary election for presidential candidates in June and a subsequent special general election in August.

The second resolution that was invalidated in Friday’s decision pardoned and reinstated the Navajo Board of Election Supervisors who were found in contempt in the October decision because they refused to follow through with a November presidential election.

Both resolutions came on the heels of the postponed Navajo presidential election, which were postponed mostly due to the fact that there was major disagreements between different factions of the Navajo government and people over the issue of language fluency and candidate Chris Deschene’s ability to fluently speak the language.

Deschene and Shirley Jr. were first and second the original primary in August and were thus slated as the two November candidates.

Dale Tsosie and Hank Whitethorne, both of whom had been presidential candidates, had filed a motion to hold Deschene, the Navajo Board of Election Supervisors and the Navajo Election Administration in contempt of court in October.

The two men are the ones who originally started the petition against Deschene over fluency requirements.

Friday’s decision denied Tsosie and Whitethorne’s petition to hold council delegate and election officials in contempt, but they will not be allowed to return, hence the upcoming election for the board.

Prior to the Oct. 31 decision, the Navajo Nation Election Board Commissioner, Wallace Charley, told KOB that the board would go to jail before it removes Chris Deschene from the presidential ballot for the upcoming election.

“The Navajo are citizens of the United States; there is a constitution that gives the principle that people have a right to vote, and their votes cannot be denied,” Charley told KOB. “So based on that, the Navajo Board of Elections Supervisors will not back off on this principle. Whether that means going to jail – fine. We’ll go to jail and see what comes out of this.”

The Supreme Court also requested Friday the Speaker of the Council convene a special session for the council to talk about how to fund the election.

The Navajo Nation Council on Wednesday approved a special run-off election to be followed by a general election, scheduled for next summer, to determine who will be the new president and vice president of the Navajo Nation, according to the Navajo Times.

The council voted 11-1, with Charles Damon II as the sole vote against, to hold the run-off election on June 2, 2015. All 17 of the original candidates who ran in this year’s primary would be qualified to be in the run-off election, including embattled candidate Chris Deschene.

Those 17 candidates will have their $1500 filing fee waived; new candidates will still have to pay it.

The special general election would then take place on August 4, and the new president will be sworn in in September if all goes according to plan.

President Ben Shelly has ten calendar days to approve the motion. He would also have to approve another piece of legislation passed by the council Wednesday that seeks to pardon and reinstate the nine members of the Navajo Board of Election Supervisors who were removed from their positions after being found in contempt of court by the Navajo Supreme Court earlier this year.

The elections bill would also provide around $317,000 to the Election Administration to fund the special elections.

Tuesday, Deschene filed a motion with the Navajo Office of Hearings and Appeals to void the order that disqualified him from being president in the first place.