According to this story in the July 31 Christian Science Monitor, Elliot Ackerman, chief operating officer for Americans Elect, recently told the press that the group’s Candidate Certification Committee will “make sure we have candidates who bridge the center of American public opinion.” This is the first indication that Americans Elect will filter candidates for its presidential nomination based on their ideas. Until this comment, Americans Elect had said, or implied, that any person who has the qualifications to be President (based on the history of actual past Presidents, i.e., been a Governor, or member of Congress, or a Cabinet member, or as an important wartime General) is eligible to compete for the nomination. Thanks to Irregular Times for the link. Ackerman’s comment is at the top of page three of the article.
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Well, so much for their “open convention” bullsh!t.
Land of the not so free. So much for my hopes of a Ron Paul AE run. It’ll definetly be Bloombe…err…I mean, someone else.
Let ’em waste their money then.
There is nothing wrong with a centrist political organization wanting to make sure that they nominate a centrist ticket next year. Furthermore, Americans Elect has demonstrated that it truly understands how difficult the ballot process is (unlike Unity08 – which seemed to be clueless in that regard). Nevertheless, there is a very much left for the American people to learn about this new group (and Americans Elect has a lot of hard work ahead).
NO such thing as *centrist*
The EVIL New Age = MORE and MORE STATIST government — dictating how folks exist — by laws, regs, exec. orders, etc.
Thus the debt limit crisis — the statists NOT daring to raise taxes to pay for their statist spending schemes — i.e. taking money from NET tax slaves and giving it to NET tax getters.
Now about a mere 18 plus TRILLION in govt debts with trillions more in unfunded future liabilities – one giant EVIL statist govt Ponzi scheme — since 1929 — 82 years and counting.
Pretty sloppy fact checking by the CSM. The three+ candidacies of Wallace, Anderson and Perot (x2) received popular vote totals of 13.5%, 6.6%, 19% and 8.5%. Two of these candidacies significantly exceeded the 9% of reported in the CSM.
Now beyond that trivia, I do not have a problem preventing Lady Gaga or Britney Spears or Ron Paul (admittedly a hottie) from being in the potential AE candidate lineup since they do not espouse pragmatic, balanced, willing-to-compromise approaches.
Will the candidates have to have a LIE detector test and/or take a blood oath by the AE folks ???
#8
Hopefully! Plus 1) signing a pledge to Grover Norquist and 2) providing conclusive evidence that they are not Kenyan/Indonesian/Hawaiian/Martian.
As always thanks for your input.
@article
Can’t say that I’m surprised.
I just found out I’m going to be getting an interview with some of their officers in a few days. Hit up the following link if you have any (civil and substantive) question suggestions:
http://riseofthecenter.com/2011/08/01/serious-question-what-would-you-ask-americans-elect/
AE has shown appallingly poor research in election law and cyber security science (given their plan to use voting over the Internet — fine for Amer Idol but not for any selection process that is legally required to be 1-vote/person and authentically voted by the person in question.
Now AE displays equally shoddy judgment in candidate selection criteria. Hypocrisy in abundance but wisdom thin.
I signed up to be one of their “delegates”, but now the more I hear the less I want to participate. It’s not truly a party where “Americans Elect” if we don’t really get to decide who we want as our candidate.
If AE wanted a secure balloting system instead of a hackable webvote: http://rangevoting.org/RivSmiTB.html
But this system doesn’t allow write-in voting and fails the test I hold for a legitimate election. However, it is more secure.
I suspect AE is just an elaborate ploy to divert a close examination of the incredible corruption of the electoral system.
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Well, duh. There’s no point in setting up a bait and switch operation like this, (Create hope of a real independent candidacy, and then divert the support to the Democratic nominee at the last minute.) if you don’t control the bait.
Americans Elect is set up so that, no matter what the ‘delegates’ want, the board of directors will be able to give the organization’s endorsement to a major party candidate of their choice at the last minute. And the board of directors are Democrats.
It’s astroturf, and one common factor among all astroturf organizations is that you never, ever, let the ‘members’ have any real control. Americans Elect fit’s this criteria to a “T”.
#16
Nice conspiracy theory. Not floating unfortunately.