Tuesday 5 February 2008: Today's Territorial Caucus made up of interested voters meets to choose 6 of American Samoa's 12 delegates to the Democratic National Convention (together representing 3 pledged delegate votes [of American Samoa's 9 total "delegate votes"] at the National Convention): Each of these 6 pledged delegates will only cast ½ (or .5) of a vote on the floor of the Democratic National Convention, thus the total of 3 pledged "delegate votes". The caucus is scheduled to take place between 9 AM local time (2000 UTC) and 11 AM local time (2200 UTC).

• These 6 at-large delegates to the National Convention are elected in 'preference caucuses' at the Territorial Convention. The delegates are allocated to the presidential contenders in a way which reflects the percentage of support for the candidates at the Territorial Convention- a mandatory 15 percent threshold being necessary in order for a presidential contender to be allocated National Convention delegates.
• Each of these 6 Pledged delegates will only cast ½ (or .5) of a vote on the floor of the Democratic National Convention.
• A fine point: Pledged DELEGATE VOTES (of which there are 3) rather than pledged DELEGATES (of which there are 6) are allocated to presidential contenders according to the percentage of the caucus vote won by each candidate.

The remaining 6 delegates (representing American Samoa's remaining 6 delegate votes) are Unpledged PLEOs who will go to the Democratic National Convention officially "Unpledged".

• This territory's Democratic Member of Congress (**TBD**) (=a non-voting Delegate in the House of Representatives); the territorial Delegate is an "Unpledged PLEO" and casts 1 delegate vote.
• This territory's Democratic Governor (**TBD**); the territorial Governor is an "Unpledged PLEO" and casts 1 delegate vote.
• This territory's 4 Democratic National Committee members: each of these territorial DNC members casts 1 delegate vote.

Here is how we estimate the delegate count as compiled from a media source from the 5 February 2008 Caucuses):

1. A candidate must receive 15% or more of the total popular vote to qualify for delegates. Discard votes cast for those candidates who do not qualify. Clinton and Obama have qualified for delegates.
2. Allocate Congressional District delegates from the qualified vote in each district. Allocate Pledged PLEO and At-Large delegates using the state-wide qualified vote.
3. In each jurisdiction (CD and statewide):
1. Total qualified vote = total votes cast for the qualifying candidates in the jurisdiction.
2. Allocation = (delegates for the jurisdiction) × (candidate's popular vote) ÷ (total qualified vote).
3. Assign each candidate the WHOLE NUMBER of delegates.
4. If delegates remain, allocate each of the remaining delegates to those candidates with the LARGEST REMAINDERS.

Note that each of the 6 delegates casts one half vote at the convention for a total of 3 delegate votes.

A report from the The Honolulu Advertiser.