Professor Rick Hasen, a prominent professor of law, a specialist in election law, and a California Democrat, has published this criticism of Americans Elect at Politico. His three main points are: (1) Americans Elect says its voters will choose a presidential nominee on the internet, but that has two drawbacks: (a) the technology is not reliable; (b) not all U.S. voters have access, or are accustomed to using, the internet; (2) Americans Elect won’t divulge the names of many of the people who are paying for the party’s ballot access petitions and its other expenses; (3) Americans Elect “has put rules in place to give an unelected committee within the group the right to veto a ticket that is not ‘balanced’.”
Political science professor Darry A. Sragow, also a California Democrat, has written this response to the Politico editor, disputing Hasen’s points. However, he does not attempt a detailed rebuttal, because Politico wouldn’t let him post his own full op-ed, and limited him to a short letter.
Hasen has a link to Americans Elect’s bylaws, which is fair of him, and which demonstrates good journalism. However, Hasen’s criticism of Americans Elect on point (3) gives the impression that Americans Elect’s leaders can override the choice of the voters in the Americans Elect presidential primary. Americans Elect bylaw 8.0 is titled “Balanced Ticket Obligation.” It says that if the winner of the Americans Elect presidential primary is a Republican, and he or she chooses a Democratic vice-presidential running mate, then that ticket is “deemed to be balanced.” For example, if Ron Paul won the Americans Elect presidential primary, and Paul chose a Democratic running mate, then no officers of Americans Elect may squelch that choice. But if Ron Paul won the Americans Elect primary and he chose an independent or a member of a minor party, then Americans Elect officers would have the authority to rule the ticket “unbalanced.”
One of the goals of the founders of Americans Elect is to elect a President and Vice-President who can work with both major parties. Americans Elect feels one way to realize that goal is to insist that the nominees be of different major parties. Americans Elect didn’t want to exclude an independent or minor party member from receiving its nomination, but because an independent candidate may have any particular ideology, Americans Elect leaders wrote Bylaw 8.0 as a device to safeguard its goal of a diverse ticket. It is not fair to use the existence of Bylaw 8.0 to then generalize that Americans Elect leaders can in general override the choice of the voters in the presidential primary. If the voters in the primary choose Ron Paul for President and Dennis Kucinich becomes his running mate, this ticket probably would not make the founders of Americans Elect happy, but they could do nothing to veto that choice.