American Samoa splits delegates in Democratic caucuses between Biden, Jason Palmer
Source: CBS News
March 6, 2024 / 5:31 PM EST
Washington — Jason Palmer, an entrepreneur with almost no name recognition, won half the delegates in American Samoa's caucuses, with the other half going to President Biden, the party announced on Wednesday.
Of the 91 ballots that were cast, Palmer received 51 and Mr. Biden received 40, according to the American Samoa Democratic Party. Each ended up receiving three delegates.
The American Samoa Democratic Party sent the results on Wednesday, correcting results they had sent the night before that was an "error," the party said. The initial, incorrect results said Palmer had four delegates and Biden two, the party said.
The split, surprise results came amid a series of wins for Mr. Biden on Super Tuesday, as he and former President Donald Trump all but cement their status as the party nominees heading toward November's general election.
Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jason-palmer-american-samoa-caucuses-results/
Their original report yesterday was an "error" and the two actually were "tied" with delegates. But gotta still keep the "Biden lost" narrative going, which is now moot (but ignore the 45 "lost VT" narrative by instead saying "Haley won VT" ).
Published March 5, 2024 Updated March 6, 2024, 1:58 a.m. ET
It looked at first like an embarrassing loss for a president struggling to rally his party behind him: For three hours on Tuesday night, President Biden appeared to have lost the Democratic caucus on a faraway Pacific island, American Samoa, to a little-known opponent. But it turns out that the embarrassment was not Mr. Biden’s. Or at least not his alone.
By 12:25 a.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, party officials in Pago Pago corrected their own arithmetic. Mr. Biden had not, in fact, lost. He had managed a tie, securing three of the territory’s six delegates — one more than the party had initially reported. There was no issue with the ballot counting: Jason Palmer, a largely unknown entrepreneur from Maryland who had campaigned on a promise to improve the Samoan education system, received 51 votes to Mr. Biden’s 40.
The problem was a rounding error: Mr. Palmer’s 56 percent share amounted to 3.4 delegates, but was incorrectly rounded up to four. Mr. Biden’s 44 percent share amounted to 2.6 delegates, but was incorrectly rounded down to two. Dean Phillips, the Minnesota congressman, was the only other Democrat who appeared on ballots, but won neither any delegates nor any votes. (The initial results and delegate allocation were confirmed by The Associated Press.)
In a statement with the corrected numbers, Andrew Berquist, a national committeeman, said simply, “We have amended our delegate count, due to a calculation error. Remainder of the results are the same.”
(snip)
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/05/us/politics/biden-american-samoa-jason-palmer.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
American Somoa is somehow important to US electoral politics.
