On July 14, Americans Elect web page posted the national cumulative total of signatures obtained on ballot access petitions across the nation. The web page is normally updated every Thursday, and normally shows that approximately 70,000 signatures had been collected in the previous week. The July 14 tally is 1,574,125, which compares to last week’s tally of 1,501,174. As usual, the vast majority of these are from California.
If Americans Elect had collected 1,574,125 nationwide, properly distributed with the required number from each state, and if it used the easier procedure in California, it would now have enough signatures to place its 2012 presidential nominee on the ballot of all 50 states. But, Americans Elect is going about its job in an extravagent manner, by spending millions to complete the more difficult California procedure, the California 10% petition, instead of doing the far easier and cheaper California 1% registration alternative.
If/when AE gets on all 50 ballots and selects a serious candidate (hopefully) what are the chances this spring boards into more comprehensive third party activity in other federal and state level candidates in the next election cycles? Of course, that is if ballot access is retained via % vote garnered in 2012.
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Re- “But, Americans Elect is — spending millions to complete the more difficult California procedure, the California 10% petition, instead of doing the far easier and cheaper California 1% registration alternative.”
I respectfully disagree. I’ve been carefully watching the effort around the SF Bay Area.
Eighty to ninety percent of the people collecting signatures, and a equal or higher percentage of those signing, don’t have even a minimal understanding of what they are doing.
I’ve yet to meet a signature gatherer who fully understands what they are doing, or what the people are signing.
I’ve made it a point to allow the signature gatherers to give me their initial “intro” line before I talk to them. It never reflects what the actual signature is doing.
I’ve caught up with half a dozen folks who signed. Not one of them fully understood what they had signed. Most were completely wrong about the issue and what their signature will do.
As such, after doing this observation for two months, I am convinced that the task of collecting even one tenth of the million, to actually join the Americans Elect Part, would be near impossible even if you gave $10 per signature.
I am amazed at the signature gatherers. The only ones I’ve seen who are successful at making even $5 per hour are those who tell the public a line that isn’t even close to the actual facts.
Mind you, I think the possibility is fair that this new party will be very good, and might allow a good third choice in 2012.
So I don’t object to, or correct the people doing the soliciting. I just say, you’re doing fine, don’t get into details. (exactly how they’ve been instructed)
The financial situation and political acuity of 80% of these folks is low to non existent. They just need a few bucks to get by. Looking to make $25 or $30. They have been given perhaps 15 minutes of training and few have any political background. I doubt the trainers know the real facts about Americans Elect. They don’t care to know.
Everyone in the training, and the tiny contractors doing the gathering, fully understands that you don’t want to give either the workers or the public the full story.
Its just too complicated and requires to many details, many of which are as yet unanswered.
So everyone just takes a simple sales line and and gets those voters who don’t ask questions.
Signatures come in and everyone is happy.
The only problem is that, at most, one person in ten understands what they’ve just signed.
(not that they wouldn’t sign if they knew the full story, but it would take 15 to 20 minutes to explain it fully and they are just walking by doing their shopping)
The lack of understanding in this entire process is much greater than I’ve ever seen in other normal initiatives, where at least at the top, their is a short paragraph describing what is at issue.
No, I don’t think you could get 1% to join the party as easily or cheaply as getting 10% to sign the current California petition.
BTW, watching this process, I am continually amazed at the people signing the petition. I am now convinced that Americans Elect will meet the 10% goal.
I’m not sure this goal would be possible were it not for the 12% unemployment rate in California.
So this might be said to be a “jobs” petition.
A stimulus program for California.
A “win win” for the Golden State.
Good luck to Americans Elect. Maybe if Ron Paul gets rejected by the GOP again he can run under the AE banner. Depends on the delegates of AE, though.
Random question…why is it that a political movement that can gather 1,574,125 petition signatures only has 342 Facebook fans?
#5 … I would like to see the answer to your question as well.
Americans Elect is like a box of cereal on the shelf.
Except it has no picture on the box and no list of ingredients. No one has ever tasted what is inside or met anyone who has done so.
In fact, no one is even sure there is anything inside the box or who placed it on the shelf. Its just a gray cardboard box with a tiny American’s Elect printed in 30 point black type on the side.
Hardly something to attract “fans” at this point.
If you say new “third party” people 99% of people yawn.
If you say new “third party” with no platform and no leader, 99.99% of people fall asleep.
Re- “But, Americans Elect is — spending millions to complete the more difficult California procedure, the California 10% petition, instead of doing the far easier and cheaper California 1% registration alternative.”
Getting over 100,000 registrations isn’t much cheaper. Registrations are harder to get and more expensive than signatures, and much more apt to be challenged for fraud.
What *would* be a lot cheaper would be to wait until AE nominates Bloom…. er, ahem, I mean, whoever they nominate, and getting them on as an independent ticket. True, it would not have the “Americans Elect” label, but very few voters would care.
The difference in price is several million dollars. Having the Americans Elect label next to Bloomb… I mean, the eventual candidate’s, name, can’t possibly be worth that much, even to someone as rich as Mr. Ackerman (or potentially even Mr. B himself, who after all did not get and stay rich by being stupid with his money).
So, the only conclusion I can logically infer is that this is being done because Mr. Arno of APC is on AE’s board, and is using this as an opportunity to make himself even richer than he is already by taking money from those who have even far more than he does.
#8:
So how exactly is Arno going to “make himself richer”?
Do you think Arno can just to sell the AE ballot access line with a nice markup to Bloomb…er, I mean whoever? Won’t the delegates have a say in this? I.E. Bloomb…whoever will have to earn the nomination.
#3:
I know you are making a balanced comment about the petition signature gathering method. I think it is kida funny that there are some folks who are signing the AE petition without fully understanding the petition which, of course, is sorta like saying that many folks are voting without understanding the candidate or the party they are voting for?
The Unity08 folks (whoever they are) are running this thing and that’s about all we know about them. The cereal box analogy from Del hits the nail on the head: we have no freaking clue who these people are and we probably aren’t going to find out until they nominate their POTUS/VP picks. Probably Mr. Bloomberg/Jesse Ventura.
Perhaps the AE folks are from outer space ???
See the V TV series – crocs appearing in human form.
#11:
Ventura…Ha!!!
It’ll be former Texas gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman to win the southern states.
Kinky ‘singing for his super’ down under. Also big on ‘see gar’ crowd, pet lovers, and salsa fans!
#8, actually it is signatures on petitions that are more likely to be rejected, not voter registrations. No party that ever got on the ballot in California via the registration method ever lost any registrations at all due to challenges of “fraud.” In 1979, when the California Libertarian Party got on the ballot by registrations, some county clerks wanted to send postcards to the new Libertarian registrants, to see if the post office might reject the address. But a Superior Court ordered that such an activity could not be conducted until after the party was safely on the ballot. Remember, in California, a new party only needs to have the needed number of registrants on any registration tally day. If it loses registrants later, it doesn’t injure the party.
A recent post at Irregular Times includes a link to their party bylaws. In there is what I’d call a bombshell.
If they do not win the Presidency, they intend to ask the “delegates” in another internet vote, after election day but before the Electoral College, meets which major party candidate should have any electoral votes they received, and give them all to that candidate. That could swing the presidency, and after their candidate lost fair and square.
If the American people want a chance for losing candidates’ voters to make their vote count, they can have runoff elections or RCV. We don’t have those for President, Americans Elect.
#3- As usual more questions than answers.A shadowy party and and financially desperate signature gathering firm do not lend themselves to disclosure(notwithstanding the lack of education on he circulators’ part).
Signing a petition to place a political party on the ballot or registering to vote under a political party’s banner is not the same thing as joining a party.