Electile Dysfunction

Note: This post was originally written on the night of November 2nd, 2010

It's almost 11 PM local time, and I'm still at work. Such is the life of media employees on election night. And no, we don't have an 11 o'clock newscast, or even a 10 o'clock one, or even a 6 PM one. Heck, as far as TV is concerned, we don't even have a newscast at all.

But I digress. I'm here to give continuing coverage on our "slideshow channel," Island Info Channel 13. A few individual polling stations have yet to submit their results, and for all I know they've already gone to bed and plan on counting the ballots tomorrow afternoon. But now I've been told that I can go home as soon as the channel is back to normal, so now I mostly just have to wait for most of the night for the computer that runs it to finish loading.

Anyway, the voters of the Rock have roundly rejected a number of "revisions" to the territorial constitution. Revisions, not amendments. Amendments would require approval by the United States Congress. And I don't think they'd approve of all of them, particularly one that basically says that the Governor and a 2/3rds majority of the Fono can nullify any Federal law they feel like. Come on AS, we in the Carolinas tried this once before, and it could've gotten really ugly.

Though instead of a serious standoff, it probably would have been more like the following conversation where I imagine the Federal government talking to ASG via text message for some reason, probably because they know the Feds can't be bothered to actually call down here:

ASG: No $7.25/hr. minimum wage for us, LOL!
FEDUSA: LOLWUT?
ASG: Yeah, we dnt want it. So it dsn't count.
FEDUSA: LOLWUT?
ASG: We said we cld nullify laws that we don't like in our cnstitutinal revisns!@
FEDUSA: LOLWUT?
ASG: We revisd our constitution.
FEDUSA: U hav a constitution? & U can amend it without us?
ASG: Hey, we only need ur permission to amend it, not 2 revise it.
FEDUSA: ...LOLWUT?
ASG: Come on, its totly diffrnt!
FEDUSA: LOLNO.
ASG: Plz?
FEDUSA: LOLNO. LOL.

(Cue random commenter telling me that I spelled "different" wrong)

So yeah, good on ya, voters of AmSam.

The other big race was for the territory's nonvoting Representative to Congress, which I can't help but notice that none of the major American news networks have covered in their website maps that supposedly cover the whole country. What's up with that? Anyhow, the seat appears to have been retained by 398-term delegate Eni Faleomavaega, who I actually quite like, especially since he was cool enough to do an interview with Steven Colbert that I posted way back when I first started this blog. And later come on our show and talk about how terrible an idea some of those Constitutional "revisions" were.

But the only really funny thing about that race, besides Tuika Tuika in general (who is really not the "ha ha" kind of funny), is that early on, a candidate who should probably remain nameless ran on the campaign slogan "Manifest Our Destiny," apparently not knowing any of the horrible Indian-killing history behind Manifest Destiny. But I never got to tell her, because she probably would have pulled all of those ads that she ran with us using that slogan.

Yeah. Now you know what my sense of humor looks like when I'm really tired.