Americans Elect, the third-party sham organization that preyed on the hopes of the easily-duped and chronically-mislead, drawing in over $35 million in funds, has announced that it will not produce a candidate this year.
There is a desire among Delegates and millions of Americans who have supported Americans Elect to see a credible candidate emerge from this process.
However, the rules, as developed in consultation with the Americans Elect Delegates, are clear. As of this week, no candidate achieved the national support threshold required to enter the Americans Elect Online Convention in June. The primary process for the Americans Elect nomination has come to an end.
More from The Guardian.
Under AE's rules, well-known candidates had to generate online votes of at least 1,000 people in each of at least 10 states across America. Relatively unknown candidates had to meet a bar five-times higher.
In practice, no-one even came close.
Of those candidates who put themselves forward, the frontrunner, Buddy Roemer, the former governor of Louisiana, only garnered 5,979 supporters – more than 4,000 short in total and further behind on an individual state basis.
Among those candidates "drafted" by delegates without their proactive participation, Ron Paul topped the list with 9,337 supporters – still under the threshold with the added problem that he is still running as a presidential candidate for the Republican party.
More than 95% of delegates declined to back any candidate, the Daily Beast pointed out.
95% of the "delegates" declined to support a candidate. How amazingly useless.
This was never going to lead to anything significant, and even if it had, it would have been a both-sides-meme generating monstrosity. Forsaking the truth for the sake of balance. A view from nowhere. Because you can't be the hip third-party guy if you agree with either of the other sides, right or wrong.
Regarding the $35 million raised by the campaign, donors who contributed more than $10,000 are receiving refunds, but the rest was apparently already spent. The implication, at least to me, is that smaller donations were spent first while the contributions of the wealthy businessmen and pundits who came up with the whole idea were protected.