Super Tuesday In American Samoa Is A Bigger Deal Than The General Election. Here’s Why.

Only one of the five United States territories will hold a primary contest today on Super Tuesday, and it happens to be the one where its residents are not American citizens. American Samoa, home to approximately 55,000 residents, is an unincorporated territory, but one where US citizenship is not granted at birth. Instead locals are considered American nationals.

According to Sarah Rosier, federal desk editor at Ballotpedia, an online encyclopedia of U.S. politics and elections, American Samoans get 11 delegates, plus one alternate. American Samoa’s governor, Lolo Letalu Matalasi Moliga, and four Democratic National Committee members are among them. The other delegates will be determined during the territory’s two-hour caucus period—the last one to take place on Super Tuesday. American Samoa’s location puts the islands three hours behind California and one hour behind Hawaii, placing them in the latest time zone for Super Tuesday.

So the caucus in the territory will not have much effect, both because of its timing and the amount of delegates at stake. But it does serve to highlight the quixotic and intricate deficiencies of American democracy.