Americans Elect Hints at Future Activity

Recent Americans Elect statements seem to hint that the organization will exist in the future. The Mission Report, which came out a few months ago, says on page 15, “Americans Elect obtained ballot certification in 29 states representing 275 electoral votes, and, until the Board of Directors suspended the nominating process, was on track to achieve ballot access in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Navigating the myriad ballot access laws in each state gives us great confidence in being able to execute again in subsequent election cycles.” Although the Mission Report is titled “Summary of Operations March 2, 2010 – May 17, 2012” the report includes letters from the leadership dated August 20, 2012.

Also, the Americans Elect web page says at the bottom, “See you in 2013! We look forward to bringing greater choice and innovation to federal, state and local elections to come.”

Americans Elect is on the ballot in 2014 in twelve states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Kansas, Maryland, Mississippi, New Mexico, South Carolina, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wisconsin. Its status in Ohio is ambiguous. The Arizona Americans Elect members who organized and who ran two candidates for Congress still have their web page up, although these activists and their Arizona web page are not recognized by the national Americans Elect leadership. Thanks to Jim Cook for the Mission Report link.


Comments

Americans Elect Hints at Future Activity — 10 Comments

  1. Richard, I don’t believe that AE will continue to be recognized in Kansas. According to the Kansas SOS website, a recognized political party must meet two requirements to maintain status each national/state general election:
    1.) Party must nominate at least one candidate to be selected on a statewide basis.
    2.) at least one such statewide selected candidate must receive at least 1% of total votes cast for the office.

    Since AE didn’t run anybody in the only statewide race this cycle (President) I believe they lose their certification come 1/1/13. Also, I believe this means the Kansas Reform Party also looses its certification because Baldwin only polled at .4%

    Clarify?

  2. #2, in Kansas, the vote test doesn’t apply in presidential years that don’t have a US Senate race up. So both Americans Elect and the Reform Party are still ballot-qualified. The law is not worded very clearly, but precedent establishes that this is what it means. In 2000 the Libertarian Party and the Reform both failed to poll as much as 1% for President, and there was no US Senate race up, and both parties maintained their status.

    The law was written that way with input from the Kansas Libertarian Party in 1984. Bill Earnest was the activist who engineered that.

  3. How much junk mail for the folks who donated time, money and/or energy to the AE machinations ???

  4. The Arizona Americans Elect Party is the only party using the Americans Elect name that has run candidates. As the Wikipedia page on the 2012 Arizona congressional elections notes with a chart, the Arizona Americans Elect Party came in fourth in total votes for Congress, beating the long-established Arizona Green Party.

    We do not recognize the national leadership of the so-called Americans Elect group. And we are the only functioning political party with the Americans Elect name.

    If they continue to use the name of our real political party, we will sue them in federal court for trademark infringement and deceptive business practices.

  5. Hasn’t the California version of Americans Elect fallen below the abandonment level under Elections Code 5101?

  6. #9, that law is only applied in January of even numbered years. You are right that Americans Elect must have about 11,000 registrations by January 2014. It will be interesting to see if the group does a registration drive to save its California ballot status.

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