The Elephant, the Donkey and the New Kid on the Block: Is Americans Elect Making Waves Through the Quagmire?

By Staff | April 3, 2012
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Said T-shirt from SXSW; the cool design making a very serious argument

The first thing my brother said when I gave him the Americans Elect t-shirt I picked up at SXSW this year? “The elephant vs donkey boxing design is so cool !” Cool? Asks Americans Elect or, as the t-shirt’s recipient also believes, is the age old fight between elephant and donkey now ridiculous?

Americans Elect is a non-partisan, non-profit organization hoping to put their stamp on politics, by stamping out some of the most overblown rhetoric between red states and blue states, elephants and donkeys. Instead of this pantomime, they are urging you ‘Pick a President, Not a party’ in the first direct nomination process.

Now, it is worth remembering that there is nowhere in the constitution is there a mention of political parties, and certainly no mention of how to organize a two-party system. George Washington was in fact incredibly wary of the divisive power of parties. It was people — or Presidents, specifically — and not parties that were always the foundation of the American political system. With this at least, Americans Elect are right on the money.

So, what does Americans Elect plan to do about it? They are hoping to make history by hosting the first, national, online presidential primary in the U.S., with candidates chosen entirely by Internet users. In other words, AE is attempting to harness the power of the Internet to turn electoral disenchantment into more power and more say; they are hoping to give the two major parties a run for their money.

How it works: Any U.S. voter can act as a delegate to nominate constitutionally eligible candidates through the Americans Elect website. Delegates may also propose and vote on the Platform of Questions — a list of questions that all candidates must answer before the June phase of the primary. And then after the two-phase primary, ending with a convention in June 2012, the resulting ticket will (likely) be listed on the ballot in all fifty states.

When the drafting began on February 1 2012, within a few hours, 360,000 delegates drafted 52 possible candidates including Michael Bloomberg, Warren Buffett, Hillary Clinton, Rahm Emanuel, Jon Huntsman, Ron Paul, Condoleezza Rice, and Buddy Roemer.

As it turns out, however, a “delegate” was just anyone who had registered their email, and so their active participation was by no means guaranteed. As a result, the greatest difficulty currently faced by the movement is converting drafted candidates into accepted ones. So far, the two most popular candidates are Buddy Roemer, Former Governor of Louisiana, and Rocky Anderson, Former Mayor of Salt Lake City. Neither are household names, and just as an aside, when I say “popular”, i’m talking about 2,745 and 1,259 supporters respectively !

Yes, stop the fighting, please ! But is this the way?

Why have AE had so much trouble? There must be hundreds of thousands of people, myself included, tired of the old ways. One explanation is that AE is no traditional third party, rallying around a set of core values; AE is no Ralph Nader.

The whole point, presumably is that they (rightly) stand against artisan dogma, but it seems that they mistook non-partisanship for not standing for anything. And in waiting for the American electorate to step up to the plate and define the issues they are most concerned about, not enough people wanted to play.

Professor Henry Farrell, a political scientist at George Washington University, explains how hard it is to get a third party up and running in the U.S. electoral system, and Americans Elect, with no platform to speak out except anti Donkey vs Elephant, “is a damp squib”.

Americans Elect is a wonderful idea — who doesn’t want an end to all the bickering? — but maybe it is so novel that people just aren’t ready yet. Maybe people like parties. Parties are easier; you can belong to a party that will tell you what you want to hear, and what you should argue about. Belonging to a party means being told how to think and who to vote for, and largely being able to stay out of the internal party squabbles as well as the national debates, sure in the knowledge that your party is looking out for you.

Yes, the current primary system borders on the absurd. It starts with Iowa, a state with less than 1% of the nation’s population, moves on to New Hampshire equally small, and it doesn’t get much more sensible from there. And yes, I don’t think I’m the only one tired of the endless partisan squabbles, and the extreme lines taken as a result. But Americans Elect is sadly not (yet) the big fix its founders had hoped.

The silver lining? A new model of electing a president and organizing the hopelessly broken party system has been introduced, and it’s one of those things we can’t go backwards from. The goal of Americans Elect is better government. A worthy goal indeed. Let’s hope we find a way to get there eventually.

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Posted in: Election, Politics
  • Bruce Epper

    Something like this requires people to think. That is not a comfortable thing for a large percentage of the American population. They like to be sheep. They have difficulty doing anything that requires rational thought. The manipulation by the extremes in both political parties gives them the basis to just simply react out of emotion with zero thought. That is their comfort zone. It is where they like to live and it gives them a way to deny any responsibility later when they learn that those people who they believed will look out for them based on ideology realize that they voted for a politician (in most cases a former lawyer who’s only profession has been to lie in order to obtain what they want) who is just looking out for what will benefit themselves and those who paid for the office they now reside in, not the people who voted them into office.

    • Eva Arevuo

      Thank you so much for this comment. I love writing about things people can/do think about in order to facilitate conversation. Keep reading ! and follow us @articlethree for more.

  • NobodyAskedMe, But

    You have presented an excellent critique of our two major parties and the gridlock in Washington. The question is whether Americans Elect is a solution.

    Many think that we should try anything. What if Americans Elect were worse? I think it would be.

    For a thorough analysis of Americans elect, go to this website: irregulartimes.com In the search box at the top right side of the page, enter “Americans Elect” and then look at the many articles.

    A significant problem is that it will be impossible for a brand-new third party candidate to win, so the result will not be a better system of government. It will be worse. Roosevelt in 1912 was a powerful third party contender. He did not win, but he took votes from the frontrunner Taft and the Republicans, turning the election to Wilson. Third party candidates in 1988 and 1992 and 2000 may also have changed the election.

    The situation that we have today, where the public is dissatisfied with both parties and neither of the top two candidates are considered worthy, is not new or unusual. It has happened many times, the most recent being the 2000 and 2004 elections. But never does a third party candidate win. The third party candidate can, at most, act as a spoiler.

    When there is a close contest, It is an old political trick to set up and support a third candidate to divide the votes of the top candidate, thereby allowing the less favored candidate to win.

    To establish a winning third party, it is necessary first to start at state legislatures and congressional offices. When the party has established itself in those lesser offices as promoting reliable and winning office-holders, the public will be willing to risk their vote on a third party candidate at the presidential level. An example is the Republican party, which evolved out of the old Whig party. When Lincoln won in 1860, the Republican party had already displaced the Whigs in the statehouses and in Congress.

    We do not know who is putting up the money for Americans Elect. We do not know who is behind this, because it is secret. The rules purport to nominate a candidate by popular internet vote, but the rules allow the final decision to be made in a “smoke-filled room” (now translated to “foie gras and cabernet filled room) by the insiders of American Elect. Of course, there is no suitable protection established that the public internet vote will be legitimately made or counted or reported.

    Analyzing all of this from the questions and facts stated above, One reasonable conclusion is that this is a Democrat party or Obama campaign attempt to screw up the 2012 election and fix it for Obama to win as the less favored candidate, by dividing the Republican vote between the Republican nominee and the nominee of Americans Elect. There are many independents and many Democrats who have never voted for a Republican and would emotionally be reluctant to do it. Perhaps some will just not vote. But many others who are dissatisfied with Obama (and there are very many Democrat registered voters who feel this way) would prefer to vote for a suitable third party candidate instead of voting Republican. Also, some Republicans may not be satisfied with the Republican nominee but would feel anyone is better than Obama, so they may be induced to give their vote to a third party candidate instead of the Republican nominee.

    If this election is close, a third party candidate who is able to garner, mostly from the Republican candidate, just 3% of the vote in only one or more key states can turn the election from Republican to Democrat.

    Depending upon which person the Americans Elect secret operators pick as their candidate, it could be that their party may draw away Democrat votes, having just the opposite effect from what I described.

    i hope that you and the public examine this Americans Elect deal more closely and try to see its fallacies and potential traps. Of course, all that I just said is reasoned speculation. It may not be correct. The problem is that it is not transparent and it smells bad.

    Based upon this mysterious hidden structure of Americans Elect, my suggestion is to avoid it.

    • Eva Arevuo

      Thank you so much for this comment. I love writing about things people can/do think about in order to facilitate conversation. Keep reading ! and follow us @articlethree for more.

  • http://internetvotingforall.blogspot.com William J. Kelleher, Ph.D.

    Hi Eva!

    Excellent statement of AE’s principles and purpose: i.e., end partisan bickering by using a new way to select and nominate a presidential candidate.

    I totally agree with you that it’s “a wonderful idea,” and that the two-party system is the worst nightmare come true of our Founders. That’s why I have volunteered to actively promote (and defend) AE. I also share your concern as to why AE isn’t exactly sweeping the nation. Here are some possible explanations as to why AE doesn’t seem to be getting off the ground:

    1. Public confusion as to what AE is. I think it was a big PR error to ever call AE “a third party.” Third parties always have a set of public policies that its members seek to get the government to adopt. But AE has no set of public policies. So, when AE is touted as a “third party,” most Americans will think it’s just another group with its own ideologies to push. Americans are very pragmatic, and have little interest in hearing about some new set of ideologies. Indeed, the clash of ideologies is one cause of the gridlock in government. AE was not originally presented clearly to the public as a non-ideological problem-solving organization.

    2. AE leadership seems to be innocent-minded folks who assumed that if they presented themselves to the public as a new bi-partisan political group, the public would simply embrace them. They appear to have had no strategy to fight back against the mean and misleading charges that would be fired at them. They seemed to think that their purity of intent would shine through all the negative press bent on muddling their public image.

    3. Because AE has no mechanism for combating the negative spin, suspicion lingers in the political culture. This needless wariness among the natural supports of political reform, keeps the participation rate in AE appallingly and dismally low. People hear time and again that a few millionaires have funded the project, and are misled into thinking its some kind of Wall Street plot to strengthen the plutocracy. Critics harp on the anonymity of the donors, and say nothing at all about the genuine transparency of the PROCESS for selecting and nominating candidates. Yet, the process is out in the open, for all to scrutinize; but that fact is not made well known.

    4. The fact that AE is a reform of the process, and not a set of policies, is a little too fine of a distinction for the mass of Americans to grasp without a clear and energetic effort at education. AE has not done this. So fine a distinction as that between process and policy has to be propagated repeatedly, and with unwavering focus. AE gets an “F” for this.

    5. AE has a sterling legal team and is being very well served by its consultants as to how to obtain ballot access in the states. But its public relations have been a disaster self-inflicted by ineptitude. Go to You Tube and listen to Brian Findlay, AE Policy Director, actually boast about never being interested in political science.* Imagine the consequences of employing a guy not interested in political science as a key manager of establishing AE as a political reform. (Go quickly, before they take it down!)
    * http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MN8XVNbRR4Y

    Also, listen to Josh Levine at, http://tmblr.co/ZZ5IXwIKBaWf where he repeatedly disavows any interest in “politics” and history. Josh is responsible for the decision that AE would NOT have a secret vote!* How’s that for understanding the American public?
    * http://internetvotingforall.blogspot.com/2012/02/americans-elect-invites-vote-buying.html

    6. Those who sign up to be “Delegates” on the AE website must be “verified” before they can vote, or “click,” in support of any candidates. But the technical construction of that mechanism was so incompetently done that there may be tens of thousands of would-be participants who have been “failed” and who don’t know why. I am still unable to click in support of a candidate. Candidates must have 10,000 clicks (1000 from 10 different states), or 50,000 if they are drafted. With only a few weeks left to qualify, even Roemer, the front runner, is several thousand clicks short, and not qualified in any state. Unless they change the rules for qualifying candidates, AE could have a ballot in all 50 states with NO CANDIDATES on the ballot!

    AE leadership has been inattentive to this self-destructive glitch for several weeks. I and others have done everything we could to have it fixed, but there is very little communication between leadership and the ground level activists.

    In spite of it all, I still think AE is a gift for those who want democratic reform of the US candidate selection and nomination process; that’s why I actively support it.

    What do you think of my analysis?

    William J. Kelleher, Ph.D.
    Twitter: wjkno1
    Blog: http://tinyurl.com/IV4All

    Author of Internet Voting Now! at,
    http://tinyurl.com/IVNow2011

    • Eva Arevuo

      Thank you so much for this comment. I love writing about things people can/do think about in order to facilitate conversation. Keep reading ! and follow us @articlethree for more.