Americans Elect 2012 | Statement by Americans Elect CEO Kahlil Byrd
Dr. Ernie Prabhakar
Statement by Americans Elect CEO Kahlil Byrd
Over the past two years, Americans Elect has focused on achieving three clear goals:
- Gaining nationwide ballot access for a third presidential ticket to compete in the 2012 race;
- Holding the first ever nonpartisan secure national online primary at AmericansElect.org; and
- Fielding a credible, balanced, unaffiliated ticket for the 2012 presidential race.
Through the efforts of thousands of staffers, volunteers, and leadership, Americans Elect has achieved every stated operational goal. Despite these efforts, as of today, no candidate has reached the national support threshold required to enter the “Americans Elect Online Convention” this June. (Read a detailed summary of the AE process here and the full rules here.)
Because of this, under the rules that AE delegates ratified, the primary process would end today. There is, however, an almost universal desire among delegates, leadership and millions of Americans who have supported AE to see a credible candidate emerge from this process.
Every step of the way, AE has conferred with its community before making major decisions. We will do the same this week before determining next steps for the immediate future. AE will announce the results of these conversations on Thursday, May 17.
As always, we thank everyone who has participated in this effort and will honor the work, efforts and trust so many people have placed in Americans Elect.
Rise of the Center
Open Letter to Kahlil Byrd and Americans Elect on Saving Americans Elect from Its Own Mistakes
- Logo of Captain Kahlil Byrd's Sinking Ship
So today I find out that Americans Elect apparently uses a feedback website called GetSatisfaction for people who have questions and concerns for what is going on over and Americans Elect, so I head over. Turns out there is a thread there, talking about their abject failure to achieve their institutional goals, and asking for feedback on how they can hopefully salvage the work they've done to get on the ballot all over the country.
I wrote the essay (heh) below in response. As the day dragged on, apparently they didn't like the response so much that they limited the number of responses that we can read to the most recent 15. I thought this might be some sort of automatic thing, but I checked other threads... they did this because they didn't want people to see how much discontent there is about their lack of a coherent organizing strategy, among other things.
Top level Americans Elect decision-makers had every indication that this was exactly where the organization was headed for months, and chose to ignore after months of dozens (that I'm aware of, I'm sure the number is closer to hundreds) of their most vocal supporters imploring them to make changes necessary to avoid the very situation they're in right now... where the millions they've spent on hiring people to do the hard work of getting ballot qualified across the country is in jeopardy (mostly) because of a seriously flawed voter verification process, an impossible to understand choice to pay back multi-millionaire donors in the middle of the campaign and a near total lack of basic political organizing on the ground across the country.
I have next to no faith in the staff at the top of Americans Elect anymore, which is plain to see in reading what I have to say below, after seeing how they ran the organization into the ground like this. I also have next to no faith that the advice given by users will be heeded, especially since they already announced that they will be announcing what they will be doing less than two days after this question was asked. There isn't nearly enough time for them to mull over what people suggest and make a call between now and Thursday.
Here's to hoping that whatever they've decided will end up being what they should have been doing all along...
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First, whoever is pulling the strings at Americans Elect needs to take a moment and be honest with themselves. This line from the Americans Elect blog makes it plainly clear that you haven't been:
"Every step of the way, Americans Elect has conferred with its community before making major decisions."
On the contrary, every step of the way Americans Elect staff has ignored political organizing fundamentals, and when the most active and motivated volunteers implored a change of course, they ignored them, never allowing an open area for delegates to talk to each other (I set one up meant for that several months ago and was ready to launch it [AmericansElectInfo.com], until I was told that it would only be acceptable to them if one of your staff was given control of the site), shouting down basic political organizing advice, deleting comments, lying about problems (most of all the failure rate of people trying to get verified) and cutting off those who wouldn't tow the line about the mistakes Americans Elect staff chose that directly led to this failure.
This place here is a great example of how horrible Americans Elect has really been in how it hasn't "conferred with its community, before making major decisions". Your website announces that you're going to make a big announcement on the 17th, which I'm sure has already been decided, and less than two days before then you post something on a third party feedback website, and then you barely tell anyone about it so we have to tell each other by word of mouth. Then the page lights up so much, someone decides to limit how many comments can be seen.
If this is your picture of conferring with the community of Americans Elect supporters, its no wonder we're where we are.
This line of questioning should have gone out 2-3 months ago, when it was already evident that this is the outcome that Americans Elect was heading towards. Irreparable damage has been done, but hopefully we can salvage some of it.
This failure is an embarrassment, and was 100% avoidable. Those who made the calls on the decisions that led to this, namely the lack of a focus on political and grassroots organizing, no "get out the vote" (GOTV) effort, the absolutely horrendous volunteer relations (above all, Alice Skelton), the choice to not have a basic forum for registered delegates to interact with each other and candidates (like the very active forums that were on the Unity '08 website), the choice to hide donor identities and the choice to start paying back donors while the organization lurched towards failure (as opposed to spending it on necessary field staff across the country) should all be fired. Like any high performing organization, when those in charge make major mistakes that take an organization in the wrong direction, you have to let go of them and bring in fresh blood.
This is standard practice for any political campaign, and needs to happen here, to make it clear that you folks realize the mistakes you've made, and you're going to chart a new and more effective course. As captain of this sinking ship, Kahlil Byrd should be the first to fall on his sword, and the board should clean house and start over with people who push for a realistic path forward that actually makes sense.
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The Consensus Here:
I
was able to read through all of the comments before the thread was
shortened (why the heck did they do that?!?) to only showing the last
15, and there was a rough consensus among the comments was to:
- Host a run off election between the top 2-10 candidates
- Give them some time to campaign, but don't make process too long
- Most seem to think we should only allow those who have declared
- Host some debates (online) between those who are in the primary
- Do more and better promoting
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My Two Cents:
Roger Ryan's motion is seriously out of line in one deeply important way. Under no circumstances should delegates be told to "move their support" to other candidates. This goes against what Americans Elect is all about. We're supposed to be about people voting for who they want, not about people telling people what to do.
I'd take the top four DECLARED candidates, and have a one month primary, where all of the support clicks are wiped clean, a solid month is spend detailing the profiles of the four candidates, several online debates are held and then hold a final vote using ranked choice voting.
If a candidate is not willing to declare, they should not be allowed through to the primary. Even though my top choice is David Walker, and this would block him out. It just doesn't make any sense to allow people through who can't even bring themselves to publicly say they want it.
I'd go with Ranked Choice voting so people can vote for who they really want, and if they don't get who they want the most, then they can choose to pick someone else who would get their vote in that case... although it is VERY important that there not be a requirement to vote for multiple candidates. If some only want to vote for one, that should be allowed. I'd suggest the top four, partially because I think a four person debate would be about as large as you really want to go.
Americans Elect does not pick the VP. That's the job of the eventual candidate.
Ryan H is correct in saying that a nationally televised debate is cost prohibitive, but a series of debates between the candidates online is not. I could do this in my living room, and AE could very easily do it.
Like so many people have implored the closed ears of Americans Elect staff for months, Americans Elect needs to stop being passive and morph into a big GOTV (Get Out The Vote) effort ASAP, where they contact everyone who's shown interest in what we're doing and contacts them (by phone if possible, the more personal the better) to implore them to go on the website, get all set up and fully registered and make their support clicks.
This is entirely doable for a professional political organization. All it requires is whipping together a simple call sheet, putting together phone banks and (ideally) setting up virtual phone banks so volunteers can help, like you saw with both the Obama and McCain campaigns in 2008.
The lame excuse Americans Elect staff made against when it was repeatedly brought up is that it somehow was promoting a particular candidate. This was never what we were pushing, and it shouldn't be. Americans Elect should be totally impartial, and just do everything they can to ensure that the most people vote. Not vote for anyone in particular, just vote, much like state and local parties do during primaries.
And that last part really sums up the reason why we're here, and not celebrating the end of the first ever online primary. The Americans Elect staff who made those faulty choices mistook "if you build it, they will come" as a viable strategy. They did well on PR, social media and ballot access, but tried building a house on a foundation of soggy mud. Political causes don't succeed just because of good ideas. They need solid organizing behind it. Americans Elect has a severe lack of this, and will continue to fail until they rectify it.
Dr. Ernie Prabhakar
This is going up on my blog tomorrow morning, and is mostly in response to Byrd:
David R. Block
David
"Free speech is meant to protect unpopular speech. Popular speech, by definition, needs no protection."—Neal Boortz
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