Marian DLG Tudela
THE Saipan and Northern Islands Municipal Council chair “highly recommends” that the Senate Committee on Judiciary, Government and Law conduct an “oversight hearing” with the Commonwealth Election Commission on Senate Bill 23-68, which proposes to allow registered voters to cast their ballots at any precinct in the CNMI on Election Day.
In her letter to committee chair Sen. Karl King-Nabors, Marian DLG Tudela said that before acting on the bill, which was introduced by Sen. Paul A. Manglona, the Senate panel should first hear from the CEC “on this subject matter in formulating the most appropriate public policy criteria governing Commonwealth elections.”
She said the concept that S.B. 23-68 is suggesting “is ostensibly premised in providing duly registered voters greater flexibility and presumably ballot access in voting on the day of election.”
Currently, a Tinian voter who is on Saipan on Election Day must return to Tinian to vote. Tudela said this “makes voting appear inaccessible or an inconvenience…, and also appears to infringe on the right to vote….”
But noting the differences between election precincts on Saipan and those on Tinian and Rota, she believes that allowing voters to cast their ballot at any precinct, as proposed by S.B. 23-68, “may incite the very essence of the horrific events that happened in the nation’s capital on Jan. 6, 2021, when all hell broke loose [with] helter-skelter ballot access undermining ballot integrity at the end of Election Day.”
Tudela said the municipal council, for its part, advocates “greater ballot access that maintains measured ballot integrity by allowing electronic voting on the day of election or voting online instead of standing in line for hours, especially on Saipan.”
