Last week, I suggested we were being played for suckers by a couple of big boy energy outfits urging us to vote their way on Question 1.

You know what it is all about by now: It is a citizens (sure it is) referendum seeking to block CMP from constructing a 145-mile-long corridor from Quebec to Lewiston bringing electric power to Massachusetts.

Most of the corridor will follow existing power line lanes. Fifty miles will have to be cut through the north woods. One mile of the new route goes across state lands.

Seven years ago, Maine regulators approved the project. Last month, a superior court judge said regulators didn’t dot the i’s and cross the t’s when they approved it, so he ordered it stopped. That ruling is on appeal.

One side says the project is great for the environment because it will replace electricity generated by pollution-belching coal and fossil fuel plants with power created by turbines turned by clean, falling water. Of course, the dams that generate the power blocked native fish from their traditional spawning grounds, but that is another story.

The other side says the cost is too great. They say CMP is destroying the environment while ripping up trees and bulldozing the pristine north woods just to benefit Massachusetts. By the way, Massachusetts is paying the bill for the construction.

Mainers know CMP wants to cut the new section through a woods crisscrossed with roads that for years provided access to hunters, snowmobile riders and loggers (and their chainsaws and skidders).

So who is right? How should you vote on Nov. 2? Got your mind made up yet? Probably not, because it is confusing.

First of all, if you approve the corridor and all its alleged benefits, you have to vote no. And if you oppose it, because it dares to touch the pristine Maine woods, you have to vote yes.

Got it? No means yes, and yes means no.

If you scratch your head and think this is a sort of backwards way to pose a question, you are right. I’ll bet some lawyer wearing a $1,000 suit, a $400 tie and a pair of Spanish loafers that cost a lot more than my first car wrote the language just to scramble the electrons wiggling around in your cerebral cortex.

Then we get to the First Amendment stuff.

Our Constitution guarantees free speech. You can say just about anything you want, except yell fire in a crowded theater, and escape a visit to the county jail. This includes annoying TV/radio and newspaper advertisements. They both are filled with snarky claims, like the one featuring a nice woman who says we should oppose the corridor because the CMP electric bills are sent to Massachusetts. Tell me, what does this have to do with anything?

How about the ad that puts down one side or the other because it was written by out-of-state lawyers. Who cares who wrote it?

Over and over in every pause in the local news or, heaven forbid it, “Jeopardy,” we are hit with another set of ads where one side puts down the other.

It is almost like the kid who pestered his folks, over and over, demanding they buy him a pony for Christmas. When they ignored him or said no, he cried and whined, then stamped his feet and held his breath. Surprise, come Christmas, there was no pony under the tree.

His ad campaign didn’t work, all it did was reinforce the parents’ decision because they knew who was going to be mucking out the stall. And, most likely, it was not junior.

If one side of the CMP corridor or the other would lay out the pros and cons, we might be able to decide for ourselves.

Sometimes it seems it is like the advice the old lawyer gave to his intern. “If you have the facts on your side, argue the facts. If you have the law on your side, argue the law. If you have neither, just yell and pound on the table.”

But in case you didn’t figure it out for yourself, neither side wants you to weigh the factors and make a rational decision.

Both sides just want you to vote with them.

For, in the end, these ad campaigns are not about birch trees, brookies, birdies, bunnies and Bambi.

It is about billions of dollars going into the pockets of the big-money energy companies who are funding both sides.

And, for the record, I dread what kind of ads we will face when the next political campaign rolls around.

You can bet the word compromise will soon become an obscenity.