Americans Elect has eased several rules on how candidates may seek the group’s presidential nomination. The original rules said that “automatic” candidates need 10,000 clicks, and “contingent” candidates need 100,000 clicks. “Clicks” means a computer response from a delegate, sitting at home in front of his or her computer. In effect, a “click” is a vote. The original rules said all these clicks must come in during a one-month period.
The new, more relaxed rules say that the clicks may come in at any time, from the moment the candidate declares for the nomination, through April 3. The new rules also lower the “contingent” candidate requirement from 100,000 to 50,000.
As before, “automatic” means someone who has the objective characteristics of past Presidents…a past or present member of Congress, or a past or present Governor, or a past or present cabinet member, or past high-ranking general, or CEO of a very large business, or national leader of a major labor union.
Americans Elect also relaxed the rules on how the delegates may override any rules-related decision of the Americans Elect board. The old rules required 2/3rds of the delegates to vote to overrule the Board. The new rules require a majority vote, and expand the time period during which the delegates may participate in an override vote.
Americans Elect held a press conference on December 21 to announce the new rules. During the question-and-answer period, Americans Elect leaders engaged in a vigorous debate with some reporters who have criticized Americans Elect because not all donors to Americans Elect are publicly identified.
Quick few questions:
1) Did they mention anything about posting those revised rules on their website?
2) Any articles you are getting this info from; were you at the press conference?
Thanks!
Reuben
While they’re changing rules, they should drop the requirement that their Presidential and Vice Presidential nominees not be of the same party.
The highly arbitrary nature of this requirement undermines the sanctity and pureness of their process. Having these types of arbitrary caveats is exactly how public perception of something like this becomes forever relegated to a fringe movement.
Further, the merits of requiring a divided Executive Branch are a bit flaky. Our Constitution once required this. It resulted in the election of a Vice President who shot Alexander Hamilton during his term. The second of seventeen amendments to the Constitution, to follow the Bill of Rights, was to change this rule. There are so many reasons against it (for starters, incentivizing frivolous impeachment attempts and, far worse, assassination attempts).
Americans Elect should gut this rule before they become any more invested in it.
It’s just too arbitrary, the merits aren’t that great, and winning a national all-inclusive internet primary is sufficient testament to a candidate’s ability to unite political divides. Having to tolerate a running mate from a different party is an infinitesimal enhancement that just isn’t worth it.
#2, I agree with you. #1, yes, I was on the call. I don’t know the answer to your question about whether the new rules are already on the web page.
Thanks Richard – I appreciate your keeping track of AE’s progress. 🙂
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This set up can work. The current governor of Montana is a Democrat while the LT governor was a Republican. The public approval numbers have been pretty good. Any other states where this is happening?
The EVIL top Donkeys/Elephants love the AE DIVIDE and CONQUER utopian machinations — to the extent that the AE top folks are NOT robot puppets of such EVIL top D/E monsters.
Keep on clicking.
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P.R. and nonpartisan App.V. — before it is too late.
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Final AE ticket to be Bloomberg-Huntsman?
Independent and Republican.
BTW, how about Romney picking Nikki Haley, South Carolina’s first female Governor as his VP?
Like Sarah Palin, except with a brain.
Too bad she endorsed Romney. If she had gone with Newt, then we could have a Newt & Nikki team.
Almost any likely AE ticket will make Obama-Biden a probable winner in November.
AE is going to allow Ron Paul to run as a third party and give the White House back to Obama. Good job AE. AE for four more years of Barack Obama. I wonder who your donors want to win.
Read…”That used to be us” by Friedman and Mandelbaum. This book gives a good overview of the problems our nation faces, and why a 3rd candidate can influence the party positions toward the center of the political spectrum.
I signed up for Americans Elect out of curiosity. I am quite disappointed, especially by the “browse candidates” feature. It seems as though you’ve taken isolated excerpts from individuals’ statements about complex issues made over a period of many years, then used a distorted algorithm to distill these into a one liner such as “all illegal immigrants should be made legal” or “national standards should determine all curriculum.” This certainly isn’t fair and certainly doesn’t reflect the actual views of many candidates you attribute these views to. You follow the same distorting process on other issues. You are not improving our politics in any way by doing this.