Well, the truth is that we have a bishop-elect. Richard Chang is still our bishop until he retires in March 2007.
But after nine ballots yesterday, running from around 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., we managed to choose the next Bishop of Hawaii. The first few ballots went as expected, with a few people coming in very low and three candidates standing out. Then two candidates stood out. And stayed right where they were, deadlocked, for ballot after ballot. For the longest time it seemed like no one was going to budge, and those were the exact words I heard from many in attendance.
Finally, after ballot eight I noticed that we'd come very close to electing one of the candidates. After ballot nine the counters brought the ballot boxes back into the Cathedral, which seemed to say we'd be voting on Saturday as well (5 p.m. was quitting time for Friday), but when they read the counts we found that we had elected The Rev. Canon Robert Fitzpatrick!
The banquet in the evening was nice, with good food and a great little presentation about Bishop Chang and his life and ministry. We then presented Bob Fitzpatrick with some of the materials we'd intended to send off to the bishop-elect (he's a local priest). "Maps, no you don't need those. So You Want to Live in Hawaii, okay, never mind that…" It was amusing and good.
We get on with the regular business of convention today, so I can't say much more! I just wanted to bring everyone up to speed!
Read more about the election from a reporter's standpoint. I searched the Honolulu Advertiser this morning and don't see the story mentioned at all, even though their religion reporter was on-site yesterday.