I'm starting to worry that Americans Elect may be as bad at reading South Dakota law as Stephanie Strong. Americans Elect is hoping to provide voters with an alternative presidential candidate chosen by open online nationwide primary this June. Since elections are run at the state level, Americans Elect has to get its eventual candidate on the ballot in all fifty states.
Americans Elect thus celebrates Secretary of State Jason Gant's validation of the 15,000-plus signatures it submitted on a petition last month to gain official political party status:
Americans Elect announced today that it has secured a ballot line in South Dakota. More than 15,000 registered voters signed the Americans Elect petition, nearly twice the state requirement, signaling that South Dakotans want a serious alternative choice for president this November.
...Joining 24 other states thus far, voters in South Dakota will now be able to participate in the first-ever national online primary to directly elect a unity ticket that will appear on the ballot in their state this November [Americans Elect press release, 2012.04.18].
Wait a minute: secured a ballot line? Voters now able to participate in online primary? No, that's not what happened. Let's look at Secretary Gant's statement:
Secretary of State Jason Gant announced today that the Americans Elect Party and the Constitution Party have both been officially recognized by South Dakota after a review of their petitions....
"The Americans Elect Party's petition contained roughly 15,500 signatures while the Constitution Party's petition contained about 8,875, and 7,928 signatures are required by law to organize a new political party in South Dakota," Gant said. "I have validated enough signatures to surpass that number in each case, so Americans Elect Party and the Constitution Party are the latest political parties to be officially recognized in South Dakota."
The Americans Elect Party's and the Constitution Party's state central committees will have 30 days to submit their constitution or set of bylaws to the Secretary of State's office once they are adopted; the documents must be in accordance with state law....
"Americans Elect Party and the Constitution Party will hold all the same rights in South Dakota as the Republican, Democratic and Libertarian Parties," Gant said. "To retain those rights, Americans Elect Party's and the Constitution Party's candidates for Governor will have to receive at least two and one-half percent of the total votes cast for that office in 2014."
Did you catch that last line? To maintain party status, Americans Elect has to run a candidate for South Dakota governor in 2014 and win 2.5% of the vote. Americans Elect is strictly about presidential elections. They won't run state-level candidates. Unless they have a surprise in store, Americans Elect will lose party status in 2014 and have to refile in 2016.
And refile for what? As Bob Mercer and I noted last month, Americans Elect isn't participating in the South Dakota primary, and that's the only legal route for official partisan presidential candidates to access the South Dakota ballot. Americans Elect's online primary, which allows any registered voter of any party affiliation to participate, is a great idea, but it does not appear to have statutory standing to place anyone on the South Dakota ballot. Regardless of its now official party status, Americans Elect will still have to place its candidate on the South Dakota ballot by another petition process, requiring 3,171 signatures by August 7.
Regardless of that party status, any South Dakota who wants can participate in the Americans Elect online primary. But there is no legal mechanism that stops those South Dakotans from also voting in the legal primary here in South Dakota. If the political party status bestowed official status on the Americans Elect primary, that would pose the possibility of what looks very much like election fraud. (Consider: do you get to walk into the June 5 primary, vote a Dem ballot, then return an hour later and cast a GOP ballot?)
Americans Elect has said it is not a political party. But it still has to operate within the legal parameters established an weighted in favor of the two major parties. Americans Elect needs to reread South Dakota law, focus its 2012 efforts on petitions that matter... then focus some 2013 efforts on legislative lobbying to bring our election system into the Internet era and win legal recognition for its online primary process.
Americans Elect deserves some consideration after the GOP is drawn, quartered, incinerated, and cast upon the dustbin of herstory.
Reverse red state collapse.
Larry, the GOP has absolutely nothing to do with "Her"story. It is definitely all about "His"tory.
good eye, de: we can't crush their little bodies for food coloring anymore either.
I would welcome a third party that could become a reasonable second party.
The Libertarian Party could evolve into a powerful force if they could get rid of their notion that the free market system can provide a solution to every problem.
Ironically, unfettered free enterprise (free-for-all enterprise) poses a threat to our basic liberties.
Does it matter, when "they" come to take your house, whether "they" are from the government or from some large multinational corporation?
No more than it matters whether the hurricane wind comes from the east or from the west.
Either way, dear little person, you are screwed.
As I see it now, Libertarians have a good handle on the risk of government tyranny (maybe too good of a handle), but appear completely blind to the real existence of corporate tyranny, more often called corporate fascism.
Once the Libertarians become the champions of the little people, the 99.9 percent, and recognize the threat posed by all large and powerful institutions (both public and private), they may emerge as a viable third party.
Maybe the Libertarians can merge with one or the other of the existing parties, but I doubt it.
Voluntaryism. That's the only answer to any of our problems, and the Libertarian Party brings it better than anyone else.
Elliot, voluntaryism suffers the same problem as communism. It depends on the idea of people, in general, becoming better, and much less selfish. Both systems would work wonderfully for guys like Cory, and quite a few of the other people here, I think, but both systems would end up with the selfish jerks taking advantage of the people willing to do the work.
Stan, the whole social liberty and fair or regulated market economics is already rather thoroughly supported by parties like Green (mostly) and Social Democratic. The problem isn't that there's no party supporting these things, it's that people are too wrapped up in the idea that they can't "waste their vote" so they better vote Democrat or Republican. I think if people would vote for whatever party they think is best, instead of squishing their views into whatever pre-designed party outlook CNN or Fox tells them is the one to have, we would have more luck with a multiparty system.
Add to that the fact that a significant portion of the population isn't capable of making a good decision about what to have for breakfast in the morning, let alone who should be the leaders of our country, and you end up with a system where a huge number of voters just vote for whoever their choice of news media told them to vote for.
Maybe we'll see a change in 2014 and 2016, but I wouldn't hold my breath
I have yet to see the Libertarian Party bring anything but failed candidates.
Voluntaryism sounds much like what I proposed when I ran for student body president at MHS in 1988. Dissolve the student council, let the programs organized by the council (like prom) be organized by ad hoc volunteer committees of all people interested in making the program happen.
Voluntaryism also peddles the lie that taxation is theft. That does a lot to close the door for me right there. Taxation is the price we pay for civil society.
The voluntaryist vision of "politics" seems rather stunted, or rather deliberately limited (like a bad L-D Debate value contention) to support their thesis. They ignore to some extent the idea that "political" action includes the public conversations we have with our neighbors to reason out and persuade others how we should interact within and sustain the polis. By saying they reject politics, are voluntaryists saying they reject the polis, the city-state, the social contract? If so, then they are asking for the state of nature, in which they will see their cherished education and free market disappear and their non-violent resistance go for nought.
Carter is correct about the common assumption of voluntaryism and communism, that people are good enough and unselfish enough to govern themselves without the state (communists use the state at first, but it withers away eventually, right?). If that assumption held, I could still campaign for a socialist economic system within a voluntaryist society: for instance, I could use education to persuade everyone that a single-payer health system would be cheaper and more effective for everyone and allow the free market to function better. We could reach a consensus to create a common treasury to pay all medical bills. isn't that voluntaryism?
Elliot, short of dissolving the state and hoping everyone can sustain a global economy and stave off crime with pleasant back-fence conversations, would you support Carter's suggestion that society is at least better off with a multi-party system? I welcome Americans Elect's efforts to get someone on the ballot; I'd love to see a serious challenger to both parties in the Presidential race backed by cohorts in the Congressional races. Elliot, how's the five-way presidential race going in France this weekend?