Americans elect: the voyage got cut short, but the crew is restless - Xpand 3D Shutter Glasses

Americans Elect can't be boarded by others, said Winger. Americans Elect took great care to register its national leadersin Washington, DC, as the state chairs of all itsballot-qualified parties. Surprisingly, states accepted the ideathat the state chair of a new party within its borders isheaded up by Elliot Ackerman or a few other AE central officeofficials. Clearly, I should have done a bit more reconnaissance beforesuggesting that state political activists could swing onto theballot access framework of Americans Elect and claim it for theirown. I may have misread the corporate structure of Americans Elect, butapparently I didn t misread the interest of many of the 2.5million who signed up as Americans Elect 'delegates' to keep themovement going in one form or another.

One of those who joined Americans Elect was William Kelleher andafter reading my column he pointed me to a Facebook page alive withhis and other comments from Americans Elect activists. That Ghost Ship can be captured, Kelleher said to me in anemail, We will have to make it known that our focus is onPolitical Reform, and that we are the up-coming challengers to thedominant two-party system. We should NOT present AE as Everyman sFriend, because we don t want to be friends with the EstablishedElites--we want to kick their butts off the political stage! Kelleher suggests that AE become a Meta group, organizing themany other groups struggling to gain traction to break the growingimpasse created by the two major parties. Kelleher writes Idon't think we should be cavalier about the AE assets.

Their webbased voting platform cost several million to build. They will keepit for the future. Their ballot access is priceless. We ought tofind a way to get ourselves in a position where we can influencehow those assets are used. The Internet world is buzzing with groups intent on changing ourpolitical process, everything from the Open Source Digital VotingFoundation, to which many tech industry leaders have signed on, tothe Modern Whig Party, which sees itself as a pragmatic, commonsense, centrist-oriented party where rational solutions trumpideology and integrity trumps impunity.

Much of this political ferment is based more on process thanpolicy, such as the soaring cost of winning office, what candidateshave to do to raise that money, the increasingly apparentdistortions of the Supreme Court s Citizens United decision, theelectoral college, the partisanship festered by party legislativecaucuses, the power of lobbyists, etc. There s a growing concernthat we might be at a point in our self-governing history whereexisting process isn t working, and won t work. Professor James Thurber of American University, one of the nation'sleading authorities on legislative process, says that his researchfinds the middle ground of politics virtually non-existent, andcompares the current legislative situation to that of 1860 for itsintransigence. At a recent forum I attended, Thurber and former U.S.

MajorityLeader Tom Daschle both agreed that the megabucks feeding a growingcampaign beast is one of the primary causes for our governingdistress. Daschle thinks a constitutional amendment, as difficult agoal as that would be, could be the only path out of the currentcampaign funding morass. Others, like Americans Elect, are focused on providing alternativesto the two-party system itself. A few nights ago I watched former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley discusshis new book, We Can All Do Better, and underscore his beliefthat the U.S.

democratic process has the tools it needs for thepublic to recapture the wheels of power. People have to use thosetools to fix what's broken, he says. Among other things, Bradley suggests that third parties at thestate and local levels don t face the nearly insurmountablehurdles that regularly defeat them in presidential contests. Hepoints to 2010, where 45 tea party supporters won congressionalseats and then united to scuttle an apparent agreement betweenPresident Obama and House Speaker Boehner to cut trillions from thenational debt.

For another example of small numbers making a big difference we canturn to Vermont, where the Vermont Progressive Party has 7 membersof the state legislature and has elected others to local councils.From these platforms, the party has managed to popularize many ofits issues and pull the Democratic Party in their direction. It sno accident that Vermont is the first state to enact its own singlepayer health plan. At the top of the nation s political pyramid there s widespreadunease whether popular consensus can any longer translate intopolitical action. But in the trenches there are countless otherswho are using the traditional tools of self-government to overcomethe mess that the existing governing class has created.

Bill Bradley s book is titled, We Can All Do Better. It s areminder that the U.S. government is designed as a servant of thepeople, not its overlord. And that when institutions of governmentfail, the public needs to take charge, rather than give up.

(Joe Rothstein can be contacted at joe@einnews.com).

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