On January 26, Americans Elect started circulating its petition for party status in Wisconsin. 10,000 signatures are needed. Americans Elect didn’t do this petition last year because Wisconsin law won’t let the party petition circulate until January 1 of an election year. It is due May 1.
Currently, the only qualified parties in Wisconsin are Democratic, Republican, and Constitution. The Green and Libertarian Parties both failed the vote test in 2010 and went off the ballot. Greens didn’t run anyone for statewide office in 2010, and Libertarians only ran a candidate for Lieutenant Governor, and he did not get as much as 1% of the vote.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve been thinking that Americans Elect is sinking as the months proceed.
Sure, they’ll get on most of the ballots in November, but I have less and less optimism that they’ll choose a candidate who will poll more than 5%, not even enough to make it into the TV debates.
I don’t see or hear of any viable candidate who seems interested in securing the AE nomination.
Huntsman — out
Not a peep out of Bloomberg
Paul would only guarantee a Obama election.
So, will the AE candidate be a candidate who disrupts one side or the other, with zero chance to win, or even put the election into the House.
Whats up with AE? Will their entire effort be for nothing?
Assuming its Obama/Romney, or Obama/Gingrich, then who fits in or around those choices in such a manner that they gain even 10% of the vote?
It appears you have already bought in to the argument that all votes belong to Ds and Rs. So what is the point?
There’s no shortage of qualified leaders in this country, but many of them have no interest in making the ideological contortions necessary to win either party’s primary, and then contorting the other direction for the general election. The AE primary process is meant to mirror the views of voters at large, 55% of whom sit between Obama and the GOP on the Cook Poltical Views Index (another 15% are to the left of Obama, while nearly 0% are to the right of the GOP).
The AE primary process will effectively draft 6 candidates for the convention (if any of them decline, the next highest vote-getters replace them). So it doesn’t matter who’s said they won’t run – once they’re drafted and elevated to the convention, they’ll get a chance to change their minds.
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The problem with AE is not so much that they can’t find a viable candidate, but that they haven’t even gotten their web site set up to start the “click to nominate” campaigns, including draft campaigns. According to their briefing book, candidates need 10,000 or 50,000 clicks (depending on whether they are considered “automatically qualified” or not) by April 3 to get on the primary ballot. But nobody can start yet because that part of the web site hasn’t been opened yet.
Right. But they’re still not a party, right? š
If Paul will give Obama the vote, then I guess you could say that the Republicans will have a bad candidate again this year. So why vote for the Republicans. Is there a candidate that can achieve at least 15% in the polls? That should get that candidate into the 3 debates.
Divide and Conquer – good for Old Age Julius Caesar, good for the EVIL New Age monsters.
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Americans Elect is making the same mistakes of the Reform Party leadership two decades before them. Maybe it is just human nature. They can not figure out who to trust. So they trust only a very small group. They can not recognize their friends from their enemies. So they are fighting and tearing down their friends. Americans Elect is a mess.
#10 That is consistent with every thing I have seen and heard from day one. It almost is beginning to look like a contest between the players as to whose turn it is to milk the Ackerman cow.
I actually think Americans Elect is doing really well for itself.
OK, so the probability is that it will be Mitt vs, Obama.
Who fills that space in the middle and has the ability to fire up the crowd such that they can send the vote even into the House, let alone gain a victory.
A name or two?
I think AE ought to be praying for Newt.
Oh, and how about if Ron Paul decides to use the AE opportunity, could anyone stop him and his followers from overwhelming the AE system?
#13 Del: I suspect that Ron Paul supporters could advance him significantly in the AE nominations process. They would face certain constraints, though:
1. To participate in the final nominations round of voting, Paul would have to agree to do so by mid-May, when the Republican primaries would still be going on.
2. Paul would have to choose a running mate who is either a Democrat or someone else with views sufficiently different from his own to meet the AE requirements for a balanced ticket.
3. Paul would have to win a majority vote of the participants. There will be up to three final nomination ballots: one with 6 tickets; then, if no ticket gets a majority, one with 3 tickets; then, if no ticket gets a majority, one with 2 tickets. If Paul doesn’t win on the first or second ballot, I can imagine a “Stop Paul” movement denying him a majority on the third. On the other hand, he might be able to win a majority on the first or second ballot, particularly if he doesn’t have big-name rivals.
Joshua Says:
January 28th, 2012 at 3:48 pm
The problem with AE is not so much that they canāt find a viable candidate, but that they havenāt even gotten their web site set up to start the āclick to nominateā campaigns, including draft campaigns.
Joshua: keep an eye on the website this week for those changes!
I know Buddy Roemer is going to run and he likes Joe Lieberman to be his running-mate. That would be an interesting choice but at the end of the day, most people think this is a smokescreen campaign for Michael Bloomberg if Newt Gingrich wins the nomination. At the end of the day, Americans Elect only real possibility for a “credible” candidate is Buddy Roemer.
Americans Elect is nominating process OF the American People. There is no specific candidate at the moment and to equate Americans Elect with past 3rd parties is an assumption. We know it is a challenge, but the current system of Democrat/Republican is just rehashing tired old cliches, bad jokes and poorly thought out rhetoric. My question is why are the voters of America afraid to challenge the current system? It is complacency and laziness. The parties play on fear, fabrication of facts, and of course the enormous amount of money needed to continue on the same worn out track. Americans Elect is not a 3rd party, it is a chance to wake up the electorate.