Recently, voters enacted “recreational pot,” devoid of public safety provisions and operational measures. Lawmakers have postponed the law’s viability until rendering it workable next year.

Simultaneously, voters added another referendum headache when it approved ranked-choice voting, which Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court ruled unconstitutional. This prize piece of political potpourri sits in the State House, expecting to gain legal-life from the Legislature.

Finally, voters expanded Medicaid to include 70,000 able-bodied workers under 64 years of age, thereby threatening care costs of nursing home residents and disabled Mainers on waiting lists. The cost of this gem and source of payment are the size of Gulliver’s puzzle pieces.

Where in tarnation is the Legislature charged with legitimizing the ranked-choice voting referendum, illegal on arrival at the State House? The Legislature can’t breathe legality into a referendum carcass nor illegality to a legal one.

Pay for this expansion of Medicaid without cutting existing budgeted items morally superior, by adding a half-cent to Maine’s sales tax. What better way to educate responsibility into voters who create or expand government via referendum?

Disadvantaged Mainers deserve moral priority over able-bodied workers. My wife of 56 years, age 78, has resided in a Maine nursing home three years, our doors 27 miles apart. Judy’s challenged 17 years by Alzheimer’s and four years by kidney malfunction. She’s a 35-year breast cancer survivor after surgery. I feed lunch and we take in regular music programs. Unable to converse beyond single sounds, she’s been heard to say three words, sacred in any society: “I love you.”

The referendum process is broken. Reason: Usage to bypass the Legislature.

Passage of programs sans money is ridiculous. Come on folks, time to stop bullying the sick and dying.

John Benoit

Manchester