Last week, Americans Elect, the not-a-political-party political party which achieved party status in Rhode Island, announced that it was ending its nomination process for President and Vice President of the United States. American Elect attempted to use an online nominating process to run a third-party ticket for the White House. Unfortunately, beyond its long process for determining delegates, it was also largely established by hedge fund managers closely tied to Wall Street and its interests. Indeed, some of its most vocal supporters (such as Thomas Friedman of the New York Times) basically were advocating for a “centrist” president; someone who wouldn’t be mean to Wall Street, yet would also be socially liberal.
Now that the dream of electing a not-Barack Obama is over, it’s time that Rhode Islanders considered what it means for us. There are twelve people registered as Americans Elect voters as of March 29th in Rhode Island. And despite the fact that it was almost entirely focused on electing a president, it still counts as a political party for local purposes. Let’s occupy it.
I don’t want to rehash arguments about Occupy Providence that I’ve already made, so I’ll just say this. Camping in Burnside Park was not the same as occupying a piece of Wall Street. But Americans Elect is a piece of Wall Street, created and funded by Wall Streeters. Could there be a sweeter victory than taking it over and turning it against its creators?
Affecting change requires a political program. If you’re looking for more diversity in Rhode Island’s politics, Americans Elect essentially blew a bus-sized hole in the two-party system. A completely undefined political party, one with no real pre-determined identity (beyond the wishes of its funders). All that is required is that someone drive the bus through. Rhode Island’s political dissidents should consider the possibility here: register as an Americans Elect candidate for state senator or representative.
An occupied Americans Elect could become Rhode Island’s version of the Pirate Party. To have any chance of survival, it would have to be. It would have to fill a missing gap in Rhode Island politics; in this case, adopting the Pirate Party’s message of radical governmental transparency with the demand for social justice. Both demands are present within Occupy Wall Street and its offshoots.
One of the most interesting things about Occupy Wall Street was the way it was so highly public in its process. While maintaining that openness was a struggle from the beginning for Occupy Providence, it would’ve provided a nice counterpoint to the General Assembly, which will soon begin its deliberations over how the budget will be shaped behind closed doors. Taking over Americans Elect, and making its reformation be highly open and accessible would lend strength to the takeover as both a protest movement, and a reform movement.
No party can force a voter to disaffiliate, according to Rob Rock at the Secretary of State’s office. So far, I can’t find anything within Title 17 (Elections) of Rhode Island state law that says that a party can block a candidate affiliated with their party from running under the party’s banner. I suppose the party’s state committee could raise an objection to the candidate’s nomination papers, but it’s unclear whether that would be enough. At time of writing, the Board of Elections has not responded to my queries.
However, it’s unclear to me whether Americans Elect even has a state committee to create bylaws for the party. It once had a Northeast Regional Director, former Operations Director of the Moderate Party Kathryn Cantwell, the Brown grad student who is now an unpaid intern in Governor Chafee’s communications office. Ms. Cantwell is no longer with Americans Elect. Between the lack of a regional director and the unsuccessful end of its nomination process, I believe now is the time to strike.
This shouldn’t even be an “Occupy Thing”, this should be a pissed-off people thing. I’ve been down on the movement before, and one of its big problems is a failure to realize that politics is important. You can’t always affect change by throwing stones and waving flags outside of the halls of power. What that can do is create a siege mentality among those inside, that the forces outside can’t be bargained with, and must be waited out.
Alternatively, political action not only paints a movement as one willing to engage in government, it also deprives the opponents of said movement a place from which to attack. Every seat that’s seized from a conservative Democrat or Republican, or a so-called “pragmatic” politician in favor of the status quo, is a seat that can be used to push for change and apply political pressure more directly.
Failure to engage in politics is a failure to engage in autonomy. One of the large reasons Pirate Parties have been successful in parts of Europe is that rather than merely protest the heavy-handedness of their governments’ crackdowns on internet piracy, they followed those protests up with a political vehicle.
Americans Elect is a vehicle without a driver, the keys in the ignition, and the door unlocked. All we have to do is get behind the wheel and put our foot on the gas.
Sam -
I think you are right on. AE has spent a fortune to win ballot access in most of the most difficult states to do so in the country, including RI.
It is pretty much unconscionable that no effort has been made to do something with that ballot access at the state level.
You should check to see if AE has a declared Chairperson for the state party. The challenge is branding the party the way you want if the party has infrastructure in place that may try to thwart you. It seems a bit silly to have a bunch of candidates storm AE running as ‘pirates’ when AE may very well have thought about this and have a plan to deal with it. It would be better to have buy in from any infrastructure they may have in place. They may not have any at all.
Lastly, AE really didn’t have any discernible ideology. The roster of declared candidates for president traversed the entire political spectrum – multiple times. While AE’s founders have their own political leanings (and knowing some of them I can tell you that those leanings are not all in one direction), the mechanism they put in place would have nominated anyone who met the minimum demonstrated support requirements. It speaks volumes that only 5 of the hundreds of *declared* candidates even bothered to file FEC paperwork. None of the candidates was able to muster the 1,000 ‘clicks of support’ in 10 states needed to qualify for nomination. That is pretty sad given that those candidates were looking at running a national campaign. Most of the declared candidates appear to have woken up one morning, chugged down a beer or two and decided to run for president.
In fact, I was always kind of horrified by the whole idea that AE had no idea what their candidate was going to look like. I for one was not about to support the effort financially without knowing where the eventual candidate was going to stand on the issues. The same roadblock prevented any real grassroots recruitment from occurring.
An excellent post. We are trying to do the same thing in Arizona, where we will have ballot access this year and in 2014 under state law. We have about 150 registered voters with the Arizona Americans Elect Party. I’ve been trying to get people from the various Occupy movements to run as write-in candidates in the AEP in Arizona, although I will be happy to have people from all ideologies. It’s hard for an independent to qualify for ballot access in Arizona, but due to an obscure loophole in our election law, a “new party” can have a state-registered write-in candidate win its primary with a plurality of the vote — or with as little as one write-in vote. I won the Green Party nomination in my Arizona Congressional district in 2010 with 6 write-in votes. The Arizona Green Party challenged me and others in federal and state courts, but they lost both cases.
Currently someone is trying to get enough signatures of registered Americans Elect party voters and independents to get on the ballot as one of our candidates for two seats on the statewide Corporation Commission. But if he doesn’t succeed, he can still run as a write-in and get our nomination.
Filling for on-the-ballot primary candidates ends on Wednesday, May 30. Then write-in candidates, who just have to fill out a simple notarized form declaring their candidacy, can register until July 19. We especially hope to have candidates in those congressional and legislative races (and the Arizona legislature is currently filled with right-wing loonies who make us the laughingstock of the US) where there is no Democrat running (or, in a few, where there is no Republican running).
We’ll see how much interest we can get. I’ve humorously declared myself Supreme Leader of the party, but all the members have the title of Supreme Leader. The joke is that it should be like Occupy, leaderless.
I’d encourage Rhode Islanders to check out your election laws and see if you can do something similar. Many of us in other parts of the country admired the Cool Moose Party and I think it would be cool if you can take advantage of the ballot line in your state.
azamericanselect.blogspot.com
We now have the first candidate ever to get on the ballot on the Americans Elect Party line. Stephen Dolgos submitted 171 signatures and will appear on the ballot in the Americans Elect primary in Arizona’s new 8th congressional district (not the old 8th, which is having a June special election to replace Gabrielle Giffords). He will appear on the ballot in November as an Americans Elect candidate. Others will, we hope, be filing as write-in candidates for the Arizona primary.
www.ballot-access.org/2012/05/31/stephen-dolgos-files-to-run-for-congress-in-arizona-in-the-americans-elect-primary/
We hope this will encourage others to run on the Americans Elect line in Rhode Island, Hawaii and other states.
Perhaps we take a page from Grayson (or Jello Biafra) and run a satirical candidate. I’ve always thought it would be funny to run a campaign premised on business friendliness and government efficiency… under my administration, all graft 50% off!