By AJ MAZZOLINI

It’s finally going to a vote, though you’re probably not invited to the polls.

The University of North Dakota opened its voting for the school’s new nickname on Monday with online voting open until midnight (presumably Central Time) Friday night, just before NoDak is to kick off in Missoula against the Montana Grizzlies football team.

The five nickname choices: Roughriders, North Stars, Fighting Hawks, Nodaks and Sundogs.

The voting is only open to a select circle of folks with close ties to UND. That includes current students, faculty and staff as well as alumni, retirees, donors and athletics season ticket holders. Anyone who meets those requirements was to receive an email from the university with a link on how to vote online.

As many as 82,000 individual emails were sent out for people to vote.

The university expects to announce its results soon, perhaps even next week, with votes tallied electronically. If any of the nicknames draws more than 50 percent of the votes, it will automatically become the school’s new nickname. In the more likely scenario that the vote is more split, the top two picks in terms of votes will then face off in another online vote.

North Dakota has been without a nickname since retiring the controversial “Fighting Sioux” moniker in 2012.