Ballot Access News:
Americans Elect Starts Party Petition in Wisconsin
Americans Elect Petition Approved in Maine
New York Magazine Story on Americans Elect
New York Magazine has this lengthy story about Americans Elect, by John Heilemann. There is not a lot of new material in this article, but the author, having interviewed leaders of Americans Elect, clearly believes that if Ron Paul wanted the Americans Elect nomination, he could obtain it. This contradicts some commentary that believes that leaders of Americans Elect can stop any proposed presidential candidate they don’t like.
The latest BAN ballot access chart available online (data about two months old at this point) for Americans Elect:
Alabama 62,200 raw towards 44,829 valid requirement
Alaska already on
Arizona already on
Arkansas already on
California finished (since then certified -p)
Colorado already on
Connecticut can’t start
Delaware 0
DC can’t start
Florida already on
Georgia 51,300 raw towards 50,334 valid requirement
Hawaii already on
Idaho 0 (now started -p)
Illinois can’t start
Indiana 0
Iowa 0
Kansas already on
Kentucky can’t start (now can, not sure if they have -p)
Louisiana 0
Maine finished (see above -p)
Maryland 1,150 raw towards 10,000 valid requirement
Massachusetts 0
Michigan already on
Minnesota 0
Mississippi 0
Missouri finished
Montana 4,000 raw towards 5,000 valid requirement
Nebraska 3,100 raw towards 4,880 valid requirement
Nevada already on
New Hampshire 0
New Jersey 0
New Mexico 0 (since then completed -p)
New York can’t start
North Carolina 30,800 raw towards 85,379 valid requirement
North Dakota 0 (since then started -p)
Ohio unsettled
Oklahoma 15,200 raw towards 51,739 valid requirement
Oregon 25,500 raw towards 21,804 valid requirement
Pennsylvania can’t start
Rhode Island finished
South Carolina 12,500 raw towards 10,000 valid requirement
South Dakota 0 (since then started -p)
Tennessee 28,200 raw towards 40,042 valid requirement
Texas can’t start
Utah already on
Vermont organizing (requirement is to be organized)
Virginia can’t start
Washington can’t start
West Virginia 0
Wisconsin can’t start (now started; see above -p)
Wyoming 5,050 (since then completed -p)
11 states certified as of about two months ago.
Irregular Times:
Self-proclaimed “centrist” presidential candidate David Jon Sponheim and an associate have been live-streaming the proceedings of an Americans Elect “conference” being held in California. I put the word “conference” in quotes because there’s not much “co” to the proceedings. Facilitator Jake Brewer (a corporate communications professional) has been using phrases like “co-creation” and “all about you” and “this is your movement” all morning and into the afternoon, with promises to the 30 or so attendees that they are in charge. But the big pad of paper he’s brought to write on is already filled-in with insights to be shared — insights like the importance of a “rapid response” team to scour the internet and respond to negative remarks. The agenda was already set before the conference, and the proceedings for hours now has consisted of Jake Brewer standing in charge up front, asking directed questions, with everyone else responding and Brewer eventually moving on to a new point. So far, the individuals invited to attend haven’t actually been allowed to make any decisions for themselves.
Nick Troiano’s List of Possible Americans Elect Presidential Candidates
From Americans Elect National Campus Director Nick Troiano:
Steve Ballmer
Meg Whitman
Mitt Romney
Eric E. Schmidt
David Petraeus
Hillary Clinton
David Boren
Erskine Bowles
Oprah Winfrey
Kenneth Chenault
Evan Bayh
Sam Nunn
Colin Powell
Bill Bradley
John Chambers
Mike Bloomberg
Antonio Villaraigosa
Tom Brokaw
Fred Smith
John Roberts
Tim Pawlenty
Bill Cohen
Condoleezza Rice
Jeb Bush
Brian L. Roberts
Jon Corzine
Barack Obama
Howard Schultz
Anderson Cooper
Lee Hamilton
Charlie Crist
Bob Kerry
Mitch Daniels
Jim Lehrer
Chris Christie
Alan Mulally
Bill Gates
Marco Rubio
Bob Graham
Robert Gates
Chuck Hagel
David Walker
Mark Warner
Tim Kaine
Jon Huntsman
Ed Whitacre
Tom Ridge
Jeffrey Immelt
Bill Richardson
Steve Jobs
80 Days Before First Candidate Ballot, Americans Elect has no Mechanism to Draft Actual Candidates
80 days from now, on April 17 2012, Americans Elect is scheduled to hold its first online-only vote for its delegates to choose between drafted presidential candidates.
The official Americans Elect rules mandate that efforts to draft candidates must build support through the Americans Elect website. Originally to have debuted on November 6 2011, the capability for people to actually draft candidates and get them qualified for the Americans Elect ballot has been referred to as “coming soon” and “very soon” on the Americans Elect “Candidates” page for three months. As of today, there is no such capability on the Americans Elect website.
Whenever Americans Elect gets around to creating a system for people to draft candidates, the official Americans Elect rules state that the draft efforts will have to collect either 10,000 clicks of support from registered and verified delegates (for insider candidates) or 50,000 clicks (for outsider candidates). That task doesn’t have to be done by April 17 (80 days from now). That task has to be done by April 3 (just 66 days from now).
From Arizona, another Document to show that Yes, Americans Elect is a Political Party
Is Americans Elect, the first-ever corporate privatized online presidential nomination, a political party?
Gosh, no, said Americans Elect in the Spring of 2011:
“Here is what Americans Elect is not. We are not a third party. We are not a political party of any sort.”
Golly, no, said Americans Elect in the Summer of 2011:
“The key delineation to make is that we’re not a party.”
Heck, no, said Americans Elect in the Fall of 2011:
“We’re not a political party and don’t have an aspiration to be.”
A point-blank no from Americans Elect in December of 2011 in a TV interview with Chris Matthews:
“We’re not a political party, Chris.”
And gee whizzikers, no, Americans Elect continues to insist in January of 2012:
“We are not a political party.”
On our Americans Elect web page we list seven sources documenting Americans Elect as a political party. Need another document? How about this one, straight from the Arizona Secretary of State?
Arizona Secretary of State Document documenting in three locations that Americans Elect is a political party.
Filer Type: Political Party
Organization Type: Political Party
Relationship: National PartyYou can’t get much clearer than that. So why does Americans Elect continue to swear up and down, over and over again, publicly, that it is not a political party?
I can’t tell you what motivates Americans Elect, because Americans Elect hasn’t communicated with me, although I’ve sent them questions in many ways.
But I can tell you this:
1. In America, political parties can’t take unlimited amounts of money.
2. In America, political parties can’t hide the names of the people who give them money.
3. Americans Elect is currently doing both.
Disclosures Americans Elect Can Make About its Funders Right Now — Without Retaliation Against Them
Without naming names, Americans Elect can disclose today:
1. The number of donations it has received, and the dollar amount of each donation.
2. The state or country of residence of each donor.
3. The principal occupation, if any of each donor.
4. The date of each donation.
5. The type of donation: loan, dollar donation, in-kind donation.
6. The amount of each loan that has been paid back by Americans Elect, as it said it would.Unless Americans Elect is incompetently run, it already has this information organized on a spreadsheet or other database. Any competent IT professional could redact the names of funders and post the other relevant information in about an hour’s time. For an organization with tens of millions of dollars in its budget, this should pose no problem.
Also without revealing the names of any funders, it should be possible to assess the veracity of Americans Elect executive Kahlil Byrd’s claim that:
“The donors who have given to the project now — whether they give as little as $1 or much more than that — are supporting an organization where they have absolutely no undue influence over the process and rules for selecting the nominee.”
This can be established by providing the following two counts, again without naming names:
7. The number of the funders of Americans Elect who are also among the Americans Elect leadership.
8. The number of those named among the Americans Elect leadership who are also funders of Americans Elect.
The General Election Pledge Americans Elect Hasn’t Made
We already know that, despite talk of democracy, the leadership of Americans Elect has a heavy influence on the selection of the eventual Americans Elect nominee. But we don’t know how much influence the big-money donors to Americans Elect will have, because the identity of those donors is being kept a secret. And although Americans Elect pledges that it will not intervene as a corporate body in the general presidential election, intervention by Americans Elect’s big money funders has not been ruled out.
[..]
But here’s what Americans Elect won’t pledge: it won’t pledge that the small, undisclosed set of people who have brought Americans Elect into existence with their big, undisclosed funding won’t go right ahead and support that ticket through another entity. It doesn’t pledge that the secret Americans Elect funders won’t create a second no-disclosure corporation to support the candidate. The small, undisclosed group of Americans Elect funders could go right ahead and do that while sticking to the letter of Americans Elect pledge; the new group would be just be called something different, like American Select or Pushing the Future or Xanax for All.
This post at Irregular Times speculates that Americans Elect could be building a commercial database of independent voters for resale.
Delay in Rolling Out Americans Elect Campaign Capability Heavily Advantages Big Money
Even internet phenomenon Ron Paul has fewer than 8,000 people unofficially tracking him (not officially supporting through a “click”) on the Americans Elect system, and he is the most-tracked politician on the Americans Elect website. To get 50,000 clicks of support, a candidate will have to engage in a significant outlay of effort, reaching out beyond the small set of people engaged in the Americans Elect website. Without large amounts of money, a grassroots campaign to spread the word and attract followers could succeed — but such efforts take time, and there’s very little time left before the first ballot. With every day that passes in which Americans Elect delays the rollout of its campaign system, the scales will be tipped ever more heavily to a wealthy self-funded candidate, or to a candidate who is backed by big money. The practical feasibility of an actual grassroots candidacy grows ever more remote.
I expect AE will make a big splash in 2012, will still be limping along in 2016, and will be nearly gone by 2020.
Petitioners in southern California were not any better at explaining it as far as I could tell. Not sure why the difference in voter registration numbers, since AE is not seeking registered voters under their label.
I live in Santa Clara County, CA and none of the Americans Elect petitioners had any clue how to explain the concept. I’m not surprised they haven’t actually registered anyone here.
That list is hilarious. It contains a dead guy (Steve Jobs) and the sitting President.
I can’t imagine a “new” name emerging and running on the AE line. You simply don’t persuade someone to make a vigorous run for President. It is not something that is done reluctantly. That is why I am convinced that this is a platform for a Bloomberg candidacy.
Given all the CIA/FBI types involved in their leadership, the data mining/databasing could have more sinister implications than just commercial resale.
It seems as if Ackerman is running some sort of scam. It could be independent voters for resale, or it could be a marketing scam of some sort (data mining either way).
It seems to have degenerated into an internal battle of consultants fighting over their ‘rightful place’ at the Ackerman trough.
As far as their ‘rapid response team’ goes, it explains why Unity ’08 was an abject failure.
Ackerman reasonablly should have known what he was getting when he hired Arno. I wonder how pleased he is about having to hire a ‘crisis management team’ to try to suppress Arno’s personal baggage, and bad business decisions.
Just my $0.02
Check the names on the list above please. Illuminati, CFR, Tri-Lateral Commission, Bilderberger Group and Rockefeller’s paperboy and gardner (well maybe not the last two) ! Don’t be naive friends about this endeavor. Re-UP your efforts in your own Party, don’t put hope in this FRAUD! Check the names.
Nelson Aldrich did more than any other power elite controlled US politician to destroy the original decentralized republic and subvert the US Constitution. Aldrich was directly responsible for implementing a banker elite controlled fascist empire, which America still has today. This march toward global governance rule over the entire world continues today with the Rockefeller-inspired CFR and other organizations advancing a one-world view of the future.: – http://thedailybell.com/2666/Nelson-Aldrich
If Ron Paul gets this nomination I will give any of you $1000 each, if he doesn’t YOU give me one Benjamin ($100). Any TAKERS !?!
With Paul dropping the words military industrial complex and corporations owning the media on national TV (even giggling while he says it), he is at a slight disadvantage for this particular position, don’t you see !?! – LOL
Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)
The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is another malevolent invention of the Anglo-American elite, also pushed forward in the modern era by David Rockefeller. Located in New York, it “advises” US political regimes and has been active since 1921. The CFR’s mission: “[To provide] a resource for its members, government officials, business executives, journalists, educators and students, civic and religious leaders, and other interested citizens in order to help them better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other countries.”
The CFR maintains a think tank called, unsurprisingly the “David Rockefeller Studies Program.” It is made up of 50 scholars, a number of fellows who receive scholarships to study American foreign policy and recommend courses of action that are then made available to the larger public, academia and of course, the mainstream media.
Foreign Affairs has long been the CFR’s main journal, and in the past has been used as a kind of elite template. Those who wished to find out what wars and ruin the elites intended to foment could read the journal to see. Often the journal published predictive articles as such plots had to be rationalized before they could be put into action. One of the more famous series of articles in the journal was published in the 1970s and involved an upcoming crisis between Islam and the West. That has, in fact, occurred.
The Council on Foreign Relations has its own history of development, but rather than present it in all of its inaccuracies and obfuscations, we shall simply assert that the CFR is fundamentally an outgrowth of elite-funded Cecil Rhodes (after whom Rhodesia was named). Rhodes was an unabashed royalist who believed in England’s manifest destiny. Perhaps an agent or protégé of the Rothschilds, Rhodes was extremely successful in extracting wealth from Africa, which mightily increased Britain’s wealth and his own as well.
Rhodes used some of his accrued fortune to set up his Rhodes Scholarships and also to fund the Royal Institute of International Affairs and its sister organization in America, the Council on Foreign Relations. These institutes were positioned as think tanks but were actually designed to control the political processes of the Anglo-American imperium and to shape it so that it further represented the interests of the Rothschild-affiliated banking classes.
Today, the CFR is one of the longest running of elite organizations, claims some 5,000 members and has produced numerous highly ranked officials in many US administrations as its sister Royal Institute no doubt has in Britain. It has influence with the CIA and armed forces as well. Seven American presidents have made speeches to the Council on Foreign Relations; Bill Clinton and George W. Bush did so while still in office.
It is useless to recite the CFR’s many denials of its influence on US presidential administrations. They are patently false. The Council on Foreign Relations and its satellite think tanks and affiliated academic and media organizations remain enormously influential. Theoretical support for America’s serial wars, its endless funding of internationalist organizations and its enthusiastic support of the central banking, fiat money controlled economies can all be seen to have emanated from the Council on Foreign Relations. It remains a preeminent fount of mischief and supporter and organizer of the US military-industrial complex, which supports the larger internationalist aims of the City of London and its Rothschild-led banking elite. – http://thedailybell.com/
Sweet dreams, don’t let the bed bugs bite!
Why do you think Feingold would be interested in that?
Speaking of Wisconsin, Roemer – Feingold would be an excellent Americans Elect ticket.
Definitely something to consider if Root worms his way on the LP ticket again.