Category Archives: ballot access

TPM reports.

ABC News reports.  WaPo has the group’s statement, which at least some opponents of AE thinks leaves wiggle room for something.  After all, as Ken Vogel noted on Twitter, the group has a nice package of ballot access in a number of states. Richard Winger too notes the potential for the group’s ballot access use in the future.

Meanwhile Lessig responds to Lumea on neutrality and AE, something which seems pretty moot.

I expect Buddy Roemer will continue to try for the Reform Party nomination and he will continue to be a non-factor.  I’d keep an eye instead on Gary Johnson.

Why did AE fail?  First it is hard to build a movement around ballot access rather than a candidate.  Second, despite what partisans say on both sides, Obama and Romney are close enough to the center that there is not really room for a radically different candidate in the middle.

And then there was the bad press from the group’s democracy deficit, which was a self-inflicted wound.

Ballot access for third party candidates in this country is way too hard, and AE had a good idea to get around it.  But its execution did not work, especially how it tried to present itself as a publicly-driven force but a core group kept tight control of its rules and expected substantive outcomes.

When is Tom Friedman’s column running when he explains why Americans Elect was not the next big thing?

Weigel explains what went wrong.

The discussion continues, even if Americans Elect may not.

“Tom Friedman said Americans Elect would be Amazon.com & an iPod wrapped up in the blogosphere. And now it’s Pets.com.”

Peter Hart, via The Guardian.

See this Time piece and Buddy Roemer’s desperate tweet.

AE Transparency explains. See also With Failures Rapidly Mounting, What Is Americans Elect’s End-Game?

AP reports.

AEI Transparency reports.

Weigel.

Politico reports.

See Jim Cook and AE Transparency.

The Guardian offers this report, with the subhead: “Group says their plan to take on America’s two-party system is on track – but a lack of engagement is hampering their cause.”

“Not ignoring. We just won the People’s Choice Award at South by Southwest and on the road doing a tech tour. Perhaps we can catch up at another time.”

Richard Winger blogs.

Harold Myerson has written this column for the LA Times.

Alex Pareene: “This, though, was penned back when they were expecting a Michael Bloomberg to sign up for their effort. Now they can’t even manage an Olympia Snowe. Primary voting begins in less than two months, and the only declared candidate who actually meets those qualifications is … Buddy Roemer. At the moment, no candidate, declared or drafted, is on pace to actually meet the number of clicked supporters (10,000 for establishment candidates, 50,000 for outsiders) necessary to qualify for the ballot, which will almost certainly necessitate major rules changes. Americans Elect, then, is a high-profile third-party ballot access campaign without a candidate.”

It is worth pointing out that if we had more reasonable ballot access rules for presidential candidates, the questionable Americans Elect effort would be unnecessary.

Surprise, surprise.  He’s “intrigued” by Americans Elect.

This will be interesting to watch.

More on Americans Elect and mischief coming from me on Monday.

BuzzFeed reports.

Jonathan Chiat ponders.

I’ll have more to say on Americans Elect soon.

Political Wire reports. Bat signal to Americans Elect?

MORE from the NYT on possible third party candidates.

Note the “duopoly” comment (via Ken Vogel).

Americans Elect has an official policy of neutrality (rule 6.1) when it comes to which candidate should get the Americans Elect nomination.  Yet one day after Tom Friedman wrote a fawning New York Times column promoting David Walker as a potential presidential candidate (without mentioning Walker’s membership on the AE board), I received this press release:

NoLa.com reports (via BAN).