1. The ballots were so confusing and wordy that it took a political scientist to understand the questions being presented. The questions were all about giving the Legislature more authority to manage our money than ever before. If passed, these initiatives give authority to a Legislature to completely manage the Retirement Fund and continue the rape of those funds for other purposes. They are trying to legally steal the money that thousands of citizens have earned over the years. This is dictatorship by legislation and our leaders have purposely made every attempt to keep the public uninformed. They have taken away one of our most sacred rights. The right to be informed. instead, they pass on to their electorate confusing statements that would make the average citizen vote yes to all of the questions and thus give them far more power than they deserve or should have. They are stealing our most precious of all rights and are getting away with it because of deceit, deception, and misinformation.
2. Polling places were changed without informing the public. How low can you get? People (like myself) went to their usual polling places only to be informed that the venue has been changed. I and many others had to find where to go to vote. No notice, no signs, no nothing. Again, many voters were disenfranchised because our elected officials were again being devious. When I arrived at the unannounced polling place there was no sign or direction as to where the voter should go. The election supervisors were mysteriously unavailable to hear complaints about this. This was a planned tactic designed to keep the electorate away from the voting booth. Disgraceful behavior again by our government.
3. There was not one intelligent explanation of these initiatives other than Ruth Tighe and Tina Sablan. Where are our newspaper journalists who are supposed to keep us informed? Hmm?
There is an absolute conspiracy on these islands to keep the electorate uninformed and misinformed. Cotton Mather of Pennsylvania in the year 1790 said “I see no difference in having one tyrant three thousand miles away than having 3,000 tyrants one mile away.” Well, it seems as If we have both one tyrant (the governor) and hundreds of other tyrants (the legislature and the election board) who want complete control over our voting habits. This behavior is dirty politics at best and illegal at worst.
I call for a complete investigation into these alleged misdeeds by our government.
DON COHEN
San Antonio, Saipan
