The Daily Oklahoman, the largest newspaper in Oklahoma, has this editorial, saying that the lawsuit on whether the state officers of Americans Elect should control their own party’s nomination process is “frivolous” and “a waste of taxpayer dollars”. Even though the portion of the editorial dealing with Americans Elect is very short, it has two factual errors.
First, it asserts that the Americans Elect national rules provided that the party would run one Democrat and one Republican for national office. Actually, the rules just said that the presidential nominee and vice-presidential nominee had to be of different partisan affiliations. The national rules did not exclude independent or minor party members from being on the ticket.
Second, the editorial says the party’s presidential electors were to vote for the nominees chosen by the Americans Elect national convention. Actually, the Americans Elect national rules said the national nominees would be chosen in an on-line vote, not a national convention.
The Daily Oklahoman also has this news story, which lays stress on the desire of Oklahoma election officials to start printing ballots on September 7. The news story does not mention that the Americans Elect state officers chose Gary Johnson on July 21, and the state deliberately did not deny their nomination until August 29. Thus, the rush to decide the lawsuit is entirely the state’s fault, not the fault of the state Americans Elect officers. Furthermore, the article fails to mention that Oklahoma state law requires the presidential electors of all qualified parties to be chosen by the state officers, not the national officers.
so what’s going to happen?
In a perfect world the court will side with the state AE on this one because on a fundamental level political parties are their own individual parties with the National Committees acting as an umbrella agent. By the OK SOS reasoning no state political party could nominate candidates, those decisions would have to come from the national body.
OK won’t let AE’s state leaders pick their own president.
So Oklahoma is against state’s rights?! Wow, who woulda thunk?
The news article also incorrectly states, “Americans Elect Party officials had planned to hold the first-ever online nominating convention to select a president-and-vice president ticket, but no candidates stepped forward to run.”
Actually, there were candidates who declared themselves to run for the AE nomination. They just didn’t get enough support clicks to qualify for the AE ballot, nor did any of the draft candidates.
Oklahoma should require that the membership of Americans Elect party choose its leadership.
The fundamental problem with the petition or vote test method is that there is not really a body of electors who constitute the party.
“the first-ever online nominating convention” – that happened in 2008 when the BTP nominated the presidential ticket of Charles Jay & Tom Knapp
The ignorance of state officials and journalists about ballot access is atlantic.
In other Americans Elect Party news, as reported here previously, Stephen Dolgos won the AE primary in Arizona’s 8th Congressional District and will be on the November ballot as the Americans Elect candidate.
I am still waiting for the results in Arizona’s 4th C.D., where I ran as a write-in candidate and according to state law, I need a “plurality” of the votes to win. The election will be certified next week by the Arizona Secretary of State.
For now, the unofficial results show 70 write-in votes in AZ-04’s Americans Elect primary, but only votes for me — a registered candidate — will be counted. Some of the counties in the district have posted their write-in totals, and I am showing one vote in Yavapai County and four votes in Mohave County. (The 26 other write-in votes in Mohave County — there were 30 in all — just aren’t counted, because they are for noncandidates.) So it looks as if I will be the second Americans Elect Party candidate on the ballot in Arizona this November.
We have heard nothing from the national AE office.
Not related but interesting: in AZ-04’s Democratic primary, where over 17,000 votes were cast, only 19 votes separate the two candidates, Johnnie Robinson and Mikel Weisser, and a recount is scheduled to start on Monday.
Gosh, if ONLY Americans Elect had a message, public financing and a seat at the debates. They’d clean up in Oklahoma.
Pingback: Daily Oklahoman Editorializes Against Letting Americans Elect State Officers Control Their Party | ThirdPartyPolitics.us