Week In Review: The Field is Open—Who Will You Choose?

The Americans Elect Candidates page has been up for a short time, but already, “360,000 delegates have drafted 52 candidates for president,” says the San Francisco Chronicle. You’ll see some recognizable names on the site, but also some that are less well known. How does it work? The Chronicle says:

In the spring, the delegates will begin three rounds of online voting to narrow the field to six candidates. One will be selected in June as the Americans Elect nominee and will appear on the ballot in November. The nominee must pick a running mate from the opposite party.

But does that mean delegates will be putting forth a “spoiler?” No, not as Darry Sragow of Americans Elect explains in Fox & Hounds: “AE is not a third party, it’s a second nominating process, which allows all Americans to directly nominate a candidate for the first time in our nation’s history.” That means:

[W]e’re providing competition in the political marketplace by offering a third choice, selected directly by the American people. For too long, each party has sought votes on the premise that they aren’t quite as bad as the other. Americans deserve better than the lesser of two evils. Competition is a core American value. It improves products and services in the business world, and we expect it will do the same in the political world.

Also, as Sragow points out, “Rank-and-file American voters have never had so much power in nominating a presidential candidate.”

Joel S. Hirschhorn says in Nolan Chart, an Americans Elect candidate has a real chance of winning in 2012, because “considering the widespread and deserved disgust among Americans with both major parties, there is a decent chance that people like me will be strongly motivated to vote for the Americans Elect alternative ticket.” This could make the election “the most important historic event that could motivate actions to get us genuine reforms of our political and government system.”

Here’s more media coverage of Americans Elect from the past week:

The Trentonian
A Governor Named Christie May Yet Decide The 2012 Presidential Election

PolicyMic
As GOP Primaries Come to an End, Americans Elect Begins

The Colorado Statesman
Americans Elect are Ready to Crash the Party