This article introduces the organization – Americans Elect. Like another group, No Labels, it appears at first blush to have a message that appeals to Americans on the right and the left; it panders to our desire to throw out the two-party system and bring in another option. Adding a third party has proven to only siphon votes from one and add a greater likelihood of success to the other of the two main established parties. It is my assertion that in order for there to be real change, we would need to see the rise of two alternative parties occur simultaneously for the reason I just described.

So when these ‘new’ groups form selling us that they are offering a revolutionary solution to the two-party system that is non-partisan – aren’t we really looking at a third party? In the case of Americans Elect and No Labels I see nothing new here. A message is always best evaluated on its sales staff and these players have been around for a long time, many of them with huge stockpiles of money to invest. There is a lot hiding under the facade of these groups that we must educate ourselves on or we will wind up sucked into the same partisan vacuum with a shiny new look. A new look that they have branded with a question mark – and that may say it all.

GOP? contributor, Susan Cardoza gives us the thumbnail sketch of what some of the hidden concerns are and demonstrates that getting answers are not that easy.

Americans Elect ~ Why/What Are They Hiding?

by Susan Cardoza

Remember Ralph Nader and the spoiler position he was “awarded” in 2000? Well, it would appear the 1% is going to try to replicate this themselves in the form of Americans Elect(AE). “They’re very secretive,” said Richard Winger, the long-time publisher of Ballot Access News. “I found out about their petition drive independent of them.”

AE was incorporated on April 6, 2010 by Peter Ackerman as a follow-up to his work on Unity08 for the 2008 U.S. presidential election. In September, Americans Elect became a 501(c) 4 corporation, and now they can be as secretive as they want. As a 501(c) 4 it is not required to report who its contributors are. However, prior to becoming a 501(c) 4, the group was required to divulge it’s sources of income. Now they do not and to top it off, they can register on ballots across the nation. All of this will be done with no sunshine whatsoever. I can think of some places this reminds me of but the United States of America is not one of them.

Consider one of AE’s big backers: Lynn Forester de Rothschild, currently the largest non-institutional investor in The Economist magazine, also its largest “trust share” investor (according to the Economist Groups 2011 Annual Report), which grants her principal rights to select its Editor. A huge Hillary Clinton supporter, financial and vocal, she never accepted President Obama’s nomination, supported McCain, and has ridiculed Obama ever since. (Note: The Economist supported Obama, though quickly turned critical but I am sure it had nothing to do with de Rothschild). However, since 2010 de Rothschild has been a major Huntsman supporter, precisely the kind of candidate some hope Americans Elect would produce. No wonder Huntsman went quietly into that dark night, he probably knows Lady de Rothschild will give him another chance.

Their website was started to begin recruiting delegates for its 2012 Presidential Primary in July 2011. During 2011 AE was placed on the 2012 Presidential ballot in 12 states. In February 2012, its website began accepting draft candidates for possible selection in the upcoming convention to be on the ballot under Americans Elect for the web. Can anyone but me see how this could go horribly wrong?

I recently had an interaction with a gentleman who introduced himself to me as a recruiter for AE. He sensed that I had some questions and was not quite ready to support his positions so he offered me his email to discuss and answer my questions. Well, I took him up on it and asked the following questions (mind you, I had an avatar that was our current president on twitter where I ran into him and he still wanted to convince me). Here is our conversation:

My Questions:

How can AE claim they are a grassroots driven organization while big money is behind everything you do?

How is it that AE’s corporate leadership can make a decision on the Internet vote if they so choose.

How can Kahlil Byrd, a former CFR [Council on Foreign Relations] member, possibly understand the plight of the poor and the middle class? Same with Ackerman whose father bankrolled the startup?

You claim you are different but I see the same big money behind your work. This makes you no different than Democrats or Republicans.

Byrd never answers questions put to him on Twitter, legitimate questions.

Whoever works the AE twitter feed ignores questions, generally speaking, you are the only one who has responded so far.

How do you answer the claims that this is being used as a spoiler in the election? All you can possibly do is put the choice into the Congress so Republican control is totally suspected by many.

And his answers:

Most of your questions aren’t able to be answered as you already have a clear opinion on the issue. What’s to say Barack Obama and whoever the Republican nominee is won’t “spoil” the election for the AE candidate? Spoiling is in the eye of the beholder when it comes to elections.

I can tell you as an employee and former volunteer and donor that there are well over 7000 individual donors to this organization. Really not sure where this “big money” thing comes from to be perfectly honest. We’re a very small time operation ($36 million operating budget) compared to either of the major two parties. The Democrats alone plan on raising over $1 trillion for this election. Seems like you may be focusing on the wrong group if you ask me. You assert Kahlil and Elliot are out of touch with the “plight of the poor and the middle class.” Not really sure how that applies to this process. This organization merely works to gain ballot access and run a nominating process to decide who gets it.
And I can personally attest to the grassroots nature of our work. My job is to find the over 1200 volunteers we’ll need to actually achieve ballot access. Signature gathering is only one piece of a large puzzle requiring thousands of volunteers. I’d say the fact that we’re so dependent on those individuals in order to achieve victory; we can be nothing but grassroots.

Comparably, party officers for both the Democrats and Republicans fill those positions and usually stand to benefit (either monetarily or reputation-wise) from their appointment or election to them. You’re obviously a Barack Obama supporter based on your Twitter picture and I’d challenge you to look more closely at the way we choose candidates in this country. Obama is there because party leadership has allowed him to be. Doesn’t seem very democratic. Just a thought. Thanks for your question.

This was my personal interaction with them and you can see the pushback I got from my questions. Personally I thought my questions were pretty good and not accusatory just penetrating which I think AE did not authorize this recruiter to answer. If they are not answering questions from other organizations, not sure why they would answer mine. My purpose was to draw him into the exact situation that evolved. My response back to him was to let him know he and his organization are being disingenuous and secretive. He did not respond to that so I guess he either agreed or was too afraid.

One reason Americans have the right to know about Americans Elect is that the stakes are so high. Americans Elect is trying to arrange the election of the next President of the United States of America, the most powerful single position on the planet. As citizens in a democratic republic, we have the right to make an informed decision, and that means transparent disclosure on the part of groups like Americans Elect that have appointed themselves to stage-manage the election.

Indeed, Americans already have public access to contribution and expenditure for the Democratic and Republican parties. If Americans Elect will not share similar information about its funders, then it represents a step backward for democracy, not a step forward.

From Irregular Times Website:

Another reason why Americans Elect needs to disclose information about its origins, funding and activities is its unfortunate history. It’s not just that Americans Elect is currently making claims that don’t match the observable facts; there’s a history of misrepresentation, misdirection and malfunction in Americans Elect’s previous effort under the name Unity08 (see here for the names of four Unity08 leaders who are in the leadership of Americans Elect). As a series of articles on the history and ethics of Unity08 shows:

In its initial filing as a corporation, in its first six months’ original IRS disclosures, and in its initial website registrations Unity08 claimed a primary business address identical to the business address of a political public relations firm working for Republican clients, Peak Creative Media, run by the former adviser to Roger Ailes of FOX News. That same individual is also the person who is the registered owner of the Americans Elect domain names.

While Unity08 proclaimed its opposition to the influence of lobbyists in politics, it quietly brought former and current lobbyists into leadership positions; when confronted with this information, Unity08 responded that “You have to have been in it to know what’s wrong with it.”

Unity08 declared that it would grow its “people’s movement” using only small donations from “everyday Americans” of “people like you.” Unity08 released a “Clean Money Pledge” in which it challenged members of the public to commit to the following plan of action: “I will only vote for a presidential candidate who has raised more than half of his/her funds through small contributions of $250 or less.” It demanded that the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates abide by this “Clean Money Pledge.” Yet at the same time it was quietly suing the Federal Election Commission to win the right to take contributions of unlimited size without public disclosure — a right Americans Elect now exercises. And an analysis of Unity 08′s 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Quarter 2006 IRS disclosures reveals that a full 82% of Unity08′s 2006 donation money came from donors of more than $250. Unity08 appears to have violated its own Clean Money Pledge.

While Unity08 leaders were insisting to the public that they weren’t using their effort to promote any particular presidential candidate, they had already reserved the domain draftmichaelbloomberg.com in June of 2007. In January of 2008, multiple Unity08 executives and staffers put Unity08 on hiatus and immediately began working on a Draft Michael Bloomberg campaign, hosted at the very same draftmichaelbloomberg.com web address that Unity08 had reserved. Despite Unity08 leaders’ declarations that the two campaigns were “completely separate,” Unity08 gave money to the Draft Bloomberg campaign and shared an office with the Draft Bloomberg campaign.

As the continuation of the factually-challenged Unity08, Americans Elect needs to take affirmative steps earn Americans’ trust. Hiding information does not help in this regard.

What can be detected so far is that Peter Ackermen started AE with a donation of his own. He brought in his son Elliot and also added Kahlil Byrd as CEO who most recently served on the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Can you just see it now with the names I have mentioned how this group is looking out for the 99%? Well neither can I.

An article in the Capitol Weekly shined light on some other notables, a few of them are:

• Arno Political Consultants of Carlsbad
• Wendy Drake of The Webster Group
• Joshua Levine – E*Trade Financial
• The Honorable Christine Todd Whitman Former Gov NJ
• Lawrence Lessig – Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership, Harvard Law School
• Mark Burnett – Television Producer
• Michael Eisner – Former CEO, The Walt Disney Company
• The Honorable William H. Webster – Former director, Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency; Chairman, Homeland Security Advisory Council; Retired Partner, Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy

And these are just a few, you can click here to see the extensive list of names that have leant themselves to AE. Also if you want to see what John Huntsman’s thoughts really were on the 2012 election? Well, he said this:

“The Republican Party is broken,” said Huntsman. “What do we need? We need campaign finance reform. The system is broken. We need term limits. We need something to compete against a duopoly that’s getting old and tired. It reminds me a little bit of 1856, when there was the advent of a Republican Party under (John C.) Fremont, who lost the first round, but Lincoln went on to win the next time. I think we’re going to have problems politically until we get some kind of third-party movement or some kind of alternative voice that can put out new ideas.”

That sounds to me, knowing all of this about AE that he knows something about AE that he is not likely to discuss until he and AE are ready. If you take into account his response to Romney now being the presumptive nominee for the Republican party, he stopped just short of full endorsement of Romney as the Republican Nominee. It is a scary thought that certain people in our country think they can buy an election but when the Supreme Court ruled on Citizens United that is exactly what has now happened.

They are trying to take your country away from you little by little. Luckily there are people out here who are shining the light on these groups and perhaps someday the people will rise up and fight back. It happened at the end of the 19th century so we know the American people do have that fighting spirit – we just need a way to catapult people out of their homes and into the streets to stand up, recognize these high-stakes games and make themselves heard.

If not, it will be business as usual and it won’t matter what they call themselves.