Election of the Day #1: St Helena

St Helena, one of the three constituent parts of the St. Helena, Ascencion, and Tristan de Cunha British overseas territory, will hold an election on Wednesday for a new legislative council. The council has 12 seats. There is one ballot with all contenders, voters can vote for up to 12 of them. There are no political parties; all candidates run as independents. Twenty three candidates are running.

All three islands that make up this overseas territory are very small and very remote, but St. Helena is notably less small and remote than the other two. Ascencion and Tristan de Cunha have well under a thousand residents, St. Helena has just over four thousand. While Ascencion and Tristan de Cunha are accessible only by boat (and many days of sailing, on a mail boat with no amenities, to get there), St Helena is relatively accessible with a commercial airport that supports a weekly seven hour commercial flight from Johannesburg.

Coverage of this election is….scant. I can’t really tell you too much about what’s at stake. (This one’s a longshot, but in the unlikely scenario that one of our readers is plugged into St. Helena’s affairs, please do share in comments.) You can read some candidate manifestos at St. Helena’s website to get a sense of how candidates are pitching themselves. A number of them have a lot to say about the need to develop renewable energy sources (the island is very diesel-dependent) and some talk about how to grow the tourist economy now that you don’t have to spend a week on a mail boat to get there. Commercial flights began in 2017 and the last couple of summers there was sufficient demand to add a second weekly flight for “peak tourist season.” There are some interesting looking Napoleon-related sites on the island, including his grave for the first two decades following his death, before the French came and dragged him back to Paris for a fancy state funeral. But I’m not sure how many people are big enough French history buffs to make it all the way. If we had a wealthy, eccentric reader interested in sending Erik there for an “Erik visits a non-American former grave” post, I wouldn’t be mad about it. (His tomb had no inscription at all because of a conflict between the British and the French about an acceptable inscription; the British refused to allow him to be identified as an Emperor while the French rejected more modest alternatives.)

But that’s pretty much all I’ve got. Consider this an open thread for all things St. Helena, elections generally, Napoleon, where to send Erik, or whatever else is on your mind.