William Nabors, Estevan King, and David Cing v. Herman Manglona, Manuel Villagomez, Howard MacAranas and Ignacio Quichocho
Opinion
Opinion
Reinhardt, J.
Three election candidates contest the results of the 1985 general election held in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. The district court dismissed their complaint for failure to state a claim. While it appears that the election involved a scheme to subvert one of the hallmarks of a representative democracy, secret ballot voting — and possibly even to coerce or bribe voters — for the reasons stated below, we hold that we no longer have jurisdiction to rule on the matter.
I. Facts
The island of Tinian is a part of the newly founded Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, which was created from part of a trust territory administered by the United States under United Nations mandate from 1947 until last year. The Commonwealth reflects the influence of American administration in many ways, including its parallels to our American political system. It has Democrats and Republicans, who vie for seats in the Commonwealth’s Senate and House of Representatives in elections held in the early part of November. As with many experiments in self-government, such elections are sometimes not entirely free of attempts to subvert the democratic process.