Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — Three options were presented to student delegates assigned to consider the House Reapportionment Amendment during the virtual 2022 American Samoa Student Constitutional Conference, and returned with the option to increase the number of faipule for Ituau and Tualauta districts, according to the presentation before the conclusion of the two-day virtual conference last week.

Student delegate Loloma Faoliu was the coordinator for this amendment while student delegate Va’afuti Va’afuti acting as secretary. Delegates assigned to this amendment held their breakout discussion and debate on Apr. 12.

Faoliu explained at the outset of the presentation that this amendment will reapportion Ituau and Tualauta (which is referred to in the local Constitution as Ma’upu) Representative Districts and change the total number of faipule. Its intent is to address the significant voting inequality in American Samoa’s House of Representative Districts.

“Our amendment was given three options and the options were discussed during the session,” she said and explained the three-options:

•           Change the borders for equal representation amongst each district;

•           Keep the borders but change the number of faipule per district  — for Ituau and Tualauta; and

•           Have only 3 Districts and everyone vote at large.

Student delegates considering this amendment proceeded with discussion and debate and offered opinions on the “pros” and “cons” for each option — making arguments for and against.

Faoliu summarized the pros/ cons for Option One from the session discussion. For the pros — it “guarantees equal representation while for “cons”, the overall outcome is that, “though it improves representation in the House, it is not the improvement it needs.”

For Option Two, under “pros” — what “we were able to gain from this one, was that, it ensures full representation especially for the two districts — Tualauta and Ituau,” according to Faoliu, who also shared that for the “cons” — the overall reaction from the delegates was, “though it improves representation in the House, it is not the improvement it needs.”

Faoliu said that these are the outcomes from student delegations following discussions on option two. “Our delegates shared that although changing the number of faipule per district will give equal representation for these two districts, it wouldn’t change the number of the population for the other districts seeing how that some districts have lesser population and higher number of representatives, while other districts have a higher number of population yet a lesser number of representatives,” she said.

“The students said that even if you change just the number of faipule for  Ituau and Tualauta, the number of the population still wouldn’t match equally. They labeled it as ‘immensely unequal’,” she explained. “We had them share their opinion, reasons, and also their solutions.”

On Option Three, the overall “pros” from the discussion was that, “This would be much easier, not a lot of work to do”, while the “cons” said that, “internal disruptions and the votes could be so divided among the proposed number of faipules to the point where there could be no clear winners.”

After thorough discussion of the three options, the delegates voted on what they think would be best. However, there were two separate votes, with Faoliu explaining that this was due to the fact that “our students had a change of mind and heart throughout our discussions, we ended up having a second vote.”

The results from the second vote had the delegates for this amendment chose Option Two: adding one faipule for Ituau and two faipule for Tualauta.  After Faoliu’s presentation, a question and answer session followed with all delegates, who participated virtually.

The overall final vote was carried out by all delegates to the Convention — with 83-yes and 23- no, passing the amendment, which seeks to add one faipule for Ituau and two to Tualauta, bringing the total House membership to 25 voting Faipule.

Samoa News will report in future editions on the other two amendments presented to the student convention.