The Portland Daily Sun (Maine) has this story on Americans Elect. It says the group has 24,000 signatures so far on its petition for recognition as a new party, and also says that Eliot Cutler, who was almost elected Governor as an independent in 2010, strongly backs the group. The Maine petition is one of the most difficult in the nation. Maine is the only state in which only independent voters, and voters who are members of that particular party, are permitted to sign the petition. It requires 28,639 valid signatures.
Any voter in Maine is already free to register as a member of Americans Elect on voter registration forms. Maine has other procedures for a group to become a qualified party. The method that is most commonly used is for a group to run a candidate for Governor or President, using the much easier independent petition. Then, if the group’s candidate gets at least 5% of the vote, that group becomes a qualified party. The Green Party used this method to obtain party status; it has never completed the difficult party petition. The party petition procedure has only existed since 1976, and was used only once before, by the Reform Party in 1995.
I am surprised that Maine, which I thought was forward thinking, has such restrictive ballot access petitioning for parties.
Maine’s ballot access laws for candidates to get on their own party’s primary ballot, if that party is relatively small, are the worst in the nation. Only Massachusetts even comes close to being as bad.
Neither Maine nor Massachusetts take the party’s size into account, and yet only certain kinds of voters can sign primary petitions. In Maine only party members can sign; in Massachusetts only party members and independents can sign. All the other states either let any voter sign a primary petition, or have no mandatory petitions for primary ballot access, or require an extremely small number of signatures, or make the number of signatures depend on the size of the party.
Maine also forces all parties to hold a caucus of party members in 14 of our 16 counties, even when some of the counties only have a few thousand registered voters.
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39% of Mainers voted for Paul LePage, a certified knuckle-dragger who has made, among others, the “forward thinking” proposal of eliminating refundable deposits on beverage containers.
So don’t give them too much credit.
Not sure if this article on Americans Elect was ever linked here.
Has more interesting conjecture than I’ve seen before, as to who the AE candidate might be.
From The Daily Beast..s. or about a Newsweek article.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/11/13/americans-elect-bids-to-transform-presidential-contests.html
For an organization with wallets as deep as AE, they seem to be cutting it sort of close on some of these efforts.
I was approached on the street in Portland, Maine by an AE signature gatherer. He told me that they’re paying $3.50 a valid signature and he is getting a 50% success rate. Interestingly, when I asked him what AE was all about, it seemed he had no idea. Talk about an astroturf operation.
#7
Keep in mind that petitioners are not necessarily anyone related to AE. They do this for a living. This is there job. They are not purporting to be AE.
Kinda like TV stations, newspapers, radio stations, websites and blogs that advertise for Rep and Dem candidates. This media could give a flying **** who the candidates or parties are. This is their job…to sell advertising.
Astroturf my ass.
In all the times I ran into signature gathers in California, I never met one who really understood what the petition or AE was all about.
It sounds like Hocus Pocus to even intelligent people.
We’re collecting signatures for a new party so a person can run for president. But we have no party members, nor any candidate. Everyone from any party can vote to nominate a candidate for our party.
Oh, BTW, our party has no platform or views.
PS. we’re funded by a bunch of hedge fund millionaires.
Right, sounds like something I want, let me sign that!
Del –
Ditto.
Yep, exactly Del.
I can hear the angst in your voices now. Change is coming. Get ready.
AE is not promoting a party or a platform. They are promoting bi-partisanship in an innovative way.
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Bipartisanship doesn’t occur because a member of the opposition party sits in the Veep seat, which politically has about as much to say about what direction the country goes in as the occupant of the baby seat has on where the car ends up. “Innovative” is not the word I’d use to describe that idea.
And who IS funding this? Is there any possibility that this is the same idea the Republicans had when they propped up George Wallace’s independent campaign in 68?
The pitch is very simple. Americans Elect is a political party trying to get ballot access for the 2012 election. Much like other minor parties Americans Elect must qualify to have their name on the ballot by having qualified electors such as you and I to sign a petition allowing for their name and candidate to appear on the ballot. Americans Elect is “The True Independent Party”. Unlike other parties or political bodies it will allow the people determine its platform and direction not party bosses.
6.Brandon Magoon wrote [in an earlier post]:
November 14th, 2011 at 8:47 am
It’s a lot more likely Ron Paul [rather than Buddy Roemer] will run as an opposition party candidate and appeal to the OWS people. After all he already has supporters there.
7.Phil Sawyer replied [in that earlier post]:
November 15th, 2011 at 7:20 pm
The really interesting thing about the Buddy Roemer campaign, though, is that he seems to be something of a populist. With all due respect to Dr. Ron Paul, not all mavericks in the Republican Party are libertarian in orientation.
4.Jeff Becker responded [in that prior post]:
November 17th, 2011 at 2:32 pm
Phil, I don’t see Ron Paul as running to be an “opposition” candidate. That kind of mischief does not appear to be in his philosophy. Ron Paul already said that he didn’t want to do it. Given that he had his real chance three years ago, I tend to believe him. I don’t know what happene[d] between him and Bob Barr last time, but I’m not holding my breath for another CP endorsement.
Phil Sawyer responds:
Jeff: First of all, just to be clear, it was Brandon Magoon who suggested that Rep. Ron Paul might “run as an opposition party candidate and appeal to the OWS people.” With that being stated, though, I have to say that it has been my impression, from reading these pages, that Dr. Paul might be having some second thoughts about staying in the Republican Party this time around. My guess is that (if that is true) the great progress, so far, of Americans Elect has a lot to do with it.
For many years now, I have been writing that the opportunity for new political groups gets better and better as the GOP continues to shrink down to the size of a minor-sized political party. It seems to me that the independent and/or third party vote (overall) will take more votes away from the Republican Party than the Democratic Party in 2012.
Since I am not a true libertarian in political philosophy (although I do agree with libertarians on certain issues, of course – as any intelligent and reasonable person would); it is of no great concern to me if Dr. Paul decides to run an independent and/or third party presidential campaign or not. If he does do so, I will just say: Good luck and I hope that you really shake things up!
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