By Gregorie Michael Towai (Eipéráng)
This Op Ed grows out of ongoing public discussions taking place on Facebook and during NMI News Service broadcasts about the size of our Legislature, the different roles of the House and Senate, the need for reapportionment and redistricting, and whether our Constitution still provides the kind of government the CNMI needs.
Those conversations have produced different opinions, as they should. Beneath them, however, is a serious question that belongs to the entire Commonwealth. Does our present political structure still fit the population, financial condition and long term needs of our islands?
This is not a question about one legislator, one political party or one administration. The structure developed over several generations. Understanding whether it still serves us requires understanding why it was created and how it changed.
In 1976, thirty nine elected delegates gathered on Saipan to draft the Constitution of the Northern Mariana Islands. They were building institutions for a people entering a new political era. They were not deciding how many political offices the CNMI must finance forever.
Their task was to balance realities that remain with us today. Saipan held most of the population, but Rota and Tinian could not be allowed to disappear beneath Saipan’s political weight. The people needed representation based on population, while each island also needed a meaningful voice in the Commonwealth.
The framers answered that challenge through a Legislature with two chambers serving different purposes.
The Senate was designed around island equality. Rota, Tinian and Aguiguan, and Saipan and the Northern Islands each received three senators. The Senate is not a population chamber. It protects the political standing of each senatorial district, confirms many executive appointments, reviews legislation passed by the House and conducts impeachment trials.
The House was designed more closely around population. Appropriation and revenue bills originate there, and the House initiates impeachment proceedings. Its districts are supposed to provide approximately equal representation according to the number of residents, subject to the geographic realities of our separate islands.
The Constitution originally provided for fourteen representatives. Twelve represented Saipan and the Northern Islands, one represented Rota, and one represented Tinian and Aguiguan. The Constitution allowed the House to grow, but only to a maximum of twenty members.
The Senate protects the equality of our islands. The House is supposed to protect the equality of our people. Both principles deserve protection, but they should never be confused.
One of the most thoughtful parts of the Constitution is that the framers did not freeze the political structure in place. They required the House to be reconsidered after every decennial census. They also required the constitutional convention question to be returned to voters at least once every ten years.
Our founders understood that a Constitution should endure without becoming immovable. They created a government that was supposed to examine itself as the population, economy and needs of the islands changed.
For a time, that is what happened.
In 1983, Public Law Number 3 78 responded to new census information by increasing the House from fourteen to fifteen members and redrawing Saipan’s districts. The government recognized that population growth required an adjustment in representation.
In 1991, the Reapportionment Act increased the House again, from fifteen to eighteen members. The Legislature justified that expansion through population growth and the constitutional requirement that representatives serve approximately equal numbers of residents.
Even then, there was concern about the cost of a growing government. In his letter approving the 1991 law, Acting Governor Benjamin T. Manglona wrote that the people wanted “more efficient government, and not just more government.” He urged future leaders to achieve equal representation by redrawing existing seats while minimizing the growth of government.
That warning could have been written today.
Following the 2000 Census, neither the Legislature nor the governor acted within the constitutional deadlines. In 2007, Maria Pangelinan and Christina Sablan petitioned the Commonwealth Supreme Court to perform the duty the political branches had neglected.
The Court expanded the House from eighteen to twenty members, added two Saipan representatives and created a fifth Saipan election district. At that time, the Census placed the CNMI population at 69,221.
Our history shows that the House grew from fourteen to fifteen, then to eighteen, and finally to twenty. Each expansion was justified by population growth. Twenty House members were never intended to become a permanent entitlement. The number changed because the population changed.
That history matters now.
The 2020 Census counted only 47,329 residents in the CNMI. That was nearly 22,000 fewer than in 2000, when the Court created the present twenty member House. The 2020 population was only about 4,000 higher than the 1990 population that produced an eighteen member House.
Yet we still have twenty representatives and nine senators. That means 47,329 people support twenty nine legislators, or approximately one legislator for every 1,632 residents.
The fiscal year 2026 budget illustrates the continuing cost. It provided $6,443,047 for the Legislative Branch and listed 135 personnel positions across member salaries, office allocations, leadership accounts, the Legislative Bureau and Youth Congress.
Not all of that expense would disappear if seats were reduced. The Legislative Bureau would remain, laws would still have to be researched and drafted, and constituent services would still be necessary. Every additional elected seat, however, brings a salary, office support and continuing overhead. When government tells agencies, workers and families to live with less, it cannot declare its own political size beyond examination.
I do not offer this argument as an attack on every senator or representative. Many work long hours and help people navigate government programs. Respecting their service does not require us to preserve every office. We should be able to recognize the value of an individual while still questioning whether every position remains necessary.
The most immediate concern is not only the number of legislators. It is the apparent failure to follow the reapportionment requirement.
Article II requires the Legislature, within 120 days after the publication of a decennial census, to reapportion House seats or revise the districts as population changes require. If the Legislature fails, the governor receives another 120 days to publish a plan. If both fail, a qualified voter may petition the Supreme Court.
The 2020 Census results were published on October 28, 2021. Those constitutional deadlines expired in 2022. No corresponding plan appears in the public record. If one exists, it should be published with its maps, population calculations and legal justification. If none exists, the constitutional duty remains unfulfilled.
The Census figures demonstrate why action matters. Saipan’s Election District 4 had 3,416 residents, while Election District 5 had 6,732. Each district elects two representatives. Even after adding the Northern Islands’ seven residents to District 4, one District 5 representative serves almost twice the resident population of one District 4 representative.
These districts are on the same island. The disparity cannot be explained by the constitutional protection afforded to Rota and Tinian. This is precisely the kind of imbalance the framers expected reapportionment and redistricting to correct.
If population growth justified increasing the House, population decline must at least require an honest examination of whether fewer seats can now provide fair representation. We cannot invoke the Census when it creates political offices and ignore it when the same process may support eliminating them.
Our constitutional history offers another important lesson.
The Second Constitutional Convention in 1985 produced forty four amendments that voters ratified. The Third Constitutional Convention met in 1995, but voters rejected all nineteen of its proposed amendments in 1996.
That is how constitutional review should work. A convention may propose changes, but the people retain the final authority to accept or reject them. Review does not determine the result beforehand. It prevents one generation of officeholders from assuming that the arrangements they inherited must remain untouched forever.
Article XVIII requires the Legislature, or the governor if the Legislature fails, to submit the constitutional convention question to voters no later than ten years after it was last presented.
The question last appeared on the ballot in 2014. It received 7,859 yes votes and 4,046 no votes. The measure received 66.01 percent support but fell only 78 votes short of the required two thirds majority.
Whether one supported or opposed a convention, the Constitution required the question to be presented again no later than 2024. The certified 2024 election results contain no such question.
We therefore face two neglected constitutional obligations. The House was not publicly reapportioned following the latest Census, and the constitutional convention question was not returned to voters within the required ten year period.
These are not minor procedural oversights. They concern who is represented, how political power is distributed and whether the government obeys the document from which its authority comes.
The Legislature should begin a transparent reapportionment and redistricting process. Census data, proposed maps and population calculations should be released before any decision is made. Public hearings should be held on Saipan, Tinian and Rota. An independent technical advisory commission should prepare alternatives so incumbents are not left alone to design the districts in which they intend to seek reelection.
Reapportionment should not end with moving boundary lines. The size of the House must also be examined. The Constitution establishes fourteen members as its foundation and twenty as its ceiling. A reduction toward fourteen deserves serious consideration unless the Legislature can demonstrate, through public cost and workload information, why each additional seat remains necessary.
The minimum House representation of Rota and Tinian must be preserved. Their distinct geography and interests justify that protection. The people should also be allowed to consider whether equal island representation in the Senate requires three senators from each district or whether that equality can be maintained with fewer.
Reducing the Senate would require a constitutional amendment. Equal treatment among the three senatorial districts should remain nonnegotiable. The number of senators should not be beyond public review.
Any final reform should produce fewer than twenty nine legislators, preserve the political voice of every island and dedicate verified savings to essential services or a protected disaster recovery reserve.
Future compliance should no longer depend entirely on the willingness of incumbents to reconsider the institutions that employ them. After every decennial census, an independent reapportionment commission should prepare public maps and recommendations. If the constitutional deadline is missed, review by the Supreme Court should begin automatically.
A constitutional review commission should also be convened every ten years to receive public testimony, examine outdated provisions and recommend whether targeted amendments or a convention are necessary. If the political branches fail to submit the required convention question, the Commonwealth Election Commission should be authorized to place it on the ballot automatically.
Without a consequence, a constitutional deadline eventually loses its meaning.
Across the decades, administrations and personalities have changed, but many of our problems have remained. We continue to struggle with unreliable utilities, an economy dependent on a narrow tourism base, expensive healthcare, housing shortages, slow disaster recovery and the departure of families seeking better opportunities elsewhere.
Twenty nine legislators have not prevented those conditions. More political offices have not necessarily created more governing capacity.
Fewer legislators will not magically repair the economy or protect us from the next typhoon. Preserving an oversized or unequal system will not do so either. Examining the size of the Legislature is not a substitute for capable leadership. It is a test of whether our leaders will apply to themselves the same fiscal discipline they demand from the public.
Reducing elected offices will be called undemocratic by some. I disagree. Democracy is not measured by how many chairs are placed in a chamber. It is measured by whether representation is fair, decisions are transparent, public money is respected and government follows the Constitution.
As a Refaluwasch son of these islands, I do not see thoughtful change as disrespect for tradition. Our seafaring traditions endured because navigators adjusted to wind, current, distance and the weight their vessels carried without losing sight of their destination. Government should be capable of the same wisdom.
The conversation taking place on Facebook and during NMI News Service broadcasts should not end when a post disappears from view or a broadcast concludes. The questions being raised deserve formal public hearings, published population maps, serious fiscal analysis and direct answers from those entrusted with public office.
Public discussion is where democratic reform often begins. It should not be where it ends.
Our history does not tell us the one perfect number of legislators. It tells us that twenty nine is not sacred, that the House was designed to change, and that inaction is not the same as constitutional continuity.
The Census recorded how our population had changed. The Constitution gave government clear instructions about what should follow. Our people have carried the cost through taxes, elections, austerity, disasters and repeated economic downturns.
Now our institutions must fulfill their responsibility.
The most faithful way to honor the framers is not to preserve every political chair that later generations added. It is to preserve the balance they created, the accountability they required and the people’s right to reconsider their government.
Protect the equal voice of our islands. Restore equal representation in the House. Reduce avoidable political overhead. Make constitutional review automatic. Then let the people decide.
Our government should be willing to redraw and reduce itself before asking our families to keep shrinking their lives.
Gregorie Michael Towai (Eipéráng) is a native Refaluwasch son of the CNMI, an independent researcher, published author and founder of the RJKC. He lives in Oregon and writes on governance, culture, economic sustainability and the future of the Marianas. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of NMI News Service.
