American People Not Ready to Seize Power

The American people do have the power to change the political process and affect real change. Yet, it seems they are not quite ready to seize that power. For the past four years, I have been helping to form America's Third Party. We have been using social media to spread our message. Every week night, we host a video chat show at blogtv.

Recently, I volunteered for Americans Elect, an organization that wanted to move beyond the two party system and put America's choice for President on the ballot. People had the opportunity to draft anyone they wanted, including the current President and people running under the Republican party. The only caveat was that the person must choose a VP that was different than themselves ideologically in order to "balance the ticket."

Unfortunately, people did not show enough interest in Americans Elect for any candidate to advance into the primary round. Perhaps, the American people just aren't ready for this kind of power.

The American people are content commenting on social media sites, REACTING to what is in the news, but they are not comfortable actually steering and guiding the conversation. Plus, a key factor is their desire to stay anonymous on the internet. Americans Elect asked people to verify their real identities and they were registered voters before they could support candidates on the site. This is primarily where efforts broke down. People prefer to remain anonymous as much as possible in this digital age, including many of the donors to Americans Elect.

Americans Elect Afterthoughts

Americans Elect offered a huge opportunity to the American people, yet we failed to seize it. Therefore, their efforts to influence the 2012 Presidential race has come to an end.

Perhaps a lot of people were hesitant to get involved due to the account security verification process. There is a huge difference between clicking a support or like button and the complex account security on the AE website.

I tried to tell AE to just use a "Like" or Facebook coded "Support" button to show candidate support during the primary process, and they could even limit it to people over 18 living in the US, like Votocracy did. I truly tried to connect these two organizations early on.

However, AE insisted on high security in the support process. I felt the security was definitely needed in the voting process (which never happened), but not needed to show support.
Many people were turned off by the process when they were asked to reveal the last 4 digits of their Social Security numbers, not to mention the questions that AE seemed to know personal info. About the person getting verified. This information came from Aristotle- an informational database aggregator.

From the perspective of the end-user, it seemed personally intrusive, especially in the digital age of phishing emails and scammers. We are told not to reveal personal information over the internet for fear of potential identity theft. Yet AE asked for this information simply to support a candidate.

Maybe next time, AE will hire more programmers (maybe the ones from Votocracy) so the support process will be easier, but the voting rounds will still be secure. It would definitely help to have more Facebook integration.

Perhaps many people just didn't know about Americans Elect. During the last month or so, I started calling television stations across the country and newspapers in my state. Many of these press people had never heard of Americans Elect. If I had started this process sooner, or if the paid Press Team had taken on this effort, the organization may have gained more traction. Oftentimes, we wait for the press to discover us, when we need to do the work of putting ourselves out there. Plus, if we do as much work as we can for the press, the more likely they will run a story about us. I hope that the negative press of AE not succeeding in this election prevents us from moving forward in the future.

AE volunteers developed "Rapid Response" teams to try to respond to negative press. In the future, I think more effort can go into developing positive stories. In addition, I think money should be spent on cable television advertising. I tried sending information about this to Americans Elect. I know they may have been hesitant to do so because of FEC regulations that require donors to be revealed who engage in electioneering communications. We should have more clarity about this from the courts by the next election.

I do believe a lot of people who would have otherwise gotten involved with Americans Elect were hesitant to do so because the donors were not revealed. I understand their desire to remain anonymous, even though we were asked to reveal our identity through the account verification process. To see where I stand on Anonymity, read my poem at www.americasthirdparty.com/NotAnonymous

I just hope the Ackermans and other financial backers did not become disheartened for the future. The American people are not ready yet, but I really think they could be ready in 2016. I look forward to working with the organization in the future.