(2012-02-15) Americans Elect

Fred Wilson gives an intro to Americans Elect. (Presidential Candidates 2012)

I signed up

• sliders to set your priorities: nothing on War On Drugs, Civil Rights/Security State
• core-questions matching: totally vague, seem more useful for market-research segmenting on attitudes than bringing out specific decisions.
  • but it did match me with Ron Paul... no wait, their interface is horrible, he's most supported by users so far. My best-matched is Howard Schultz (StarBucks), followed by Bob Dole?!?!
  • I remember from past elections someone had a much better candidate-matcher.
    • ah, yes, Vote Smart.
      • they have a nice Vote Easy matcher, but it's only for official Presidential Candidates 2012. The questions are much better. It matches me with Gary Johnson, then Ron Paul.

Their pitch is "support a candidate not a party". Maybe it should be "support a position" - 2012-01-05-TransparentLobbyingMarketIdea.

• related: Albert Wenger hopes this will support a 1-issue candidate who will veto everything until Campaign Finance reform is passed. Larry Lessig has been drafted...

Anil Dash thinks the appropriate strategy is to Route Around Campaign Finance breakage by making money (Advertising) less important, with his tactic being the use of Social Networking to pitch better candidates. He's advising Votizen.

May15: they gave up. "Despite these efforts, as of today, no candidate has reached the national support threshold required to enter the 'Americans Elect Online Convention' this June." The group had received ballot access in virtually every state and may have been a force in the 2012 election, had the online nomination process worked. The final top three declared candidates on the Americans Elect website--former Louisiana governor Buddy Roemer, former Salt Lake City mayor Rocky Anderson, and activist Michealene Risley--had fewer than 12,000 votes among them.