Americans Elect’s web page now says 1,348,312 signatures have been obtained on petitions around the nation, to get that party on the ballot. The page seems to update that figure each Thursday. Last week’s total had been 1,262,665. The vast majority of these signatures have been obtained in California, where 1,030,040 valid signatures are needed.
In California, Americans Elect petitioners are being paid $1.25. However, if a petitioner submits at least 400 signatures per week, the pay for all signatures for that petitioner that week is raised to $2.00 per signature.
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Wow, congratulations to the A.E. for their work!
“In California, Americans Elect petitioners are being paid $1.25. However, if a petitioner submits at least 400 signatures per week, the pay for all signatures for that petitioner that week is raised to $2.00 per signature.”
This is actually a really crappy pay rate. The base rate of $1.25 really isn’t anything to get excited about in this day and age of gas at $4 per gallon, and the petition is really burned out now (as in a lot of people have already signed it). Something like 700,000 plus signatures have already been collected on Americans Elect in California and this is not what I’d call a popular petition.
I worked on the Americans Elect petition in California for a little over a month from May-June and I’d say that it sucked. That $2 bonus rate may sound appealing, but $2 on a burned out petition isn’t that good of a rate and it’s actually on the difficult side to get 400 signatures on it in a week (and note that one has really got to turn in more than 400 signatures due to signatures getting purged during the validity check, and also note that the petition coordinators will only pay the $2 rate if one has at least 400 signatures with 75% validity). They area apparently having a problem with duplicate signatures because the petition has been out for a while and a lot of people have signed it and some petitioners are pitching it in different ways. I can usually get 400 plus signatures per week pretty easily (I usually get a lot more than that), but getting 400 signatures a week on Americans Elect in California right now is hard.
The Americans Elect petition hit the streets in California back in March and they’ve still got a good way to go before being finished. I spoke to a petition coordinator in California back in March before Americans Elect hit the streets as a paid petition and this coordinator told me that the petition was going to have a .75 cent bonus on it that would push the price up to $2 if one got the bonus rate, however, APC (the petition company that has the contract on Americans Elect petitions) withheld the bonus until June, so that means that everyone who gathered signatures on that petition for the first couple of months or so only got paid $1.25.
I really think that it is disgraceful that Americans Elect has been paying so low given how much money the people behind Americans Elect have. The founder of Americans Elect, Peter Ackerman, is worth somewhere between $500 million and $1 billion. I bet that Americans Elect is paying a much higher price to APC than the street price the petition would indicate.
I’ve worked on a lot of petitions to put political parties/candidates on the ballot in a lot of states and I would say that Americans Elect in California is one of the most difficult ones that I’ve ever worked. The only ones that I can think of that were as difficult as Americans Elect in California were the times I worked on petitions for Ralph Nader in 2004 in areas where there were lots of Democrats (like Washington DC, northern Virginia, and Austin, Texas), but Nader was paying a better rate to the petition circulators (for the most part).
People in California are used to having other parties besides Democrat and Republican on the ballot as the American Independent Party, the Peace and Freedom Party, the Libertarian Party, and the Green Party have all been on the ballot in California for a quite a while (of course this is going to change due to the passage of Proposition 14), so people in California don’t really care that much about having Americans Elect on the ballot, especially since the party doesn’t even have a platform beyond wanting to have a convention over the internet were all registered voters are invited to sign up as delegates. The general response from most Californians about Americans Elect was “Who cares?”
Working on Americans Elect in California was so crappy that I left for another petition gig in another state.
Americans Elect still has a heck of a lot of signatures they need to get in a lot of states so I think that they are going to have to get higher on the pay rates if they want ballot access in all 50 states plus DC for the 2012 election.
Where is the Democracy petition to have electronic signatures for ALL petitions ???
Const Amdts, laws
Candidates, recalls.
Thank you, Andy (#3, above), for the very informative and well written article. It continues to be interesting to see what this group of people is up to. I especially liked your statement that indicated how very limited the platform is right now for Americans Elect.
Not only is Mike Arno underpaying people, he is issueing charge backs on what many believe is a quesionable formula and a questionable validation program. The time and hassle necessary to check a hundred bad signatures at the local registrar of voters office may approaching worthwhile. (If you check 100 bad signatures and find 5 signatures that he is calling bad, he is cheating the circulator 5%, if you find 10 bad it’s 10% etc.) Anyone who gets charged back should demand copies of any petitions for which APC refuses to pay for in full. This is a reasonable request, especially if his formulas cause someone to lose the bonus.
Arno’s pattern of conduct the last few years is glaringly similar to his behavior preceeding his last bankruptcy in he early 1990’s. He ran up bills over several seasons, with the intent of never paying them.
Additionally, he has been moving money in a shell game involving multiple corporations. See the California Secretary of State website. Look up Capitol Links, Direct Voice, Election Systems Inc….