The OTHER presidential election on November 6 - Palau goes to the polls (vote, Reed)

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Palauan presidential election, 2012 - Wikipedia

The tiny (2.5 times the size of Washington, DC), 21,000-person nation of Palau is also holding a presidential vote on November 6, 2012. Due to time differences (9pm eastern time in the US corresponds to 2pm in Palau), voting has actually been underway for almost seven hours. First results are expected sometime after 8pm Palau time (3am Eastern US), at which point we'll find out if current president Johnson Toribiong gets to keep his job, or if challenger (and former two-term Palau president from 2001 to 2009) Tommy Remengesau, Jr. will unseat him.

Palau is an interesting place. It's a former US "trust territory" from 1947 to 1994, before entering into a "compact of free association" with the US. It still maintains close ties to America, sharing some government functions (the US Postal service, for instance). Palau citizens are allowed to join the US military without being treated as foreigners, and the US military provides Palau's external defense. The country includes the island of Peleliu, along with a number of World War II-era undersea wrecks. Palau, in 2009, also agreed to take in a number of freed inmates from the Guantanamo Bay prison.

Geographically, it's kind of remote. The main island is about 540 miles due east of Mindanao's southwest shore (in the southern Philippines), or 550 miles to some barely-inhabited islands in Indonesia's North Sulawesi region. The nearest major city with a direct air connection is Manila - a 1,000 mile flight.

So, this election may not lead the news once it is decided in a few hours, but it might be at least a short distraction from our thing here in the US.

The results will be posted to:

Island Times (a newspaper from Palau)

and

Oceana TV - TV and news from Palau