By Douglas Burns

A non-partisan organization, Americans Elect, is looking to crack the foundation the nation’s two-party political system by holding a national online primary to nominate a ideologically balanced U.S. presidential ticket that will appear on the actual November ballot. All registered voters can use their computers or Internet-capable mobile devices to serve as delegates in the May caucuses and June online convention.

A national non-profit and non-partisan organization, Americans Elect, is well on its way to ballot access in all 50 states and plans to hold an online presidential nominating process starting next month.

The goal: a grassroots, Net-driven effort to nominate an ideologically-balanced ticket for the November presidential election. The Americans Elect presidential candidate must pick a running mate from a different party. The candidates will appear on ballots as the Americans Elect ticket — right along with Democratic candidate President Barack Obama and the Republican candidate, presumed to be former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

Americans Elect hopes to nominate a candidate who can break through traditional party politics and represent millions of Americans the organization believes are being disenfranchised by a process led by extremes in the Democratic and Republican parties.

“We’re not trying to become another party,” said Dagny Leonard, deputy press secretary for Americans Elect.

In a phone interview, Leonard said Americans Elect is attempting to build a platform for direct democracy.

“The whole process is really up to the delegates,” Leonard said.

All registered voters can participate in the online nominating caucuses in May and the convention in June.

Currently, registered voters from across the country can log on to americanselect.org and sign up as delegates. So far, Leonard said, about 400,000 people have done this. Delegates then can list their candidate preferences and even get involved in “drafting” candidates.

Additionally, delegates can rank their issue priorities and determine the candidates with whom they best match.

The first caucus starts at 11 p.m. on Monday, May 7 and runs for 24 hours. Delegates vote for their top candidate. There are two more caucuses, 11 p.m. on May 14, and 11 p.m. on May 21. The top six candidates will advance to the Americans Elect National Primary — which runs from 11 p.m. on Monday, June 11 to 11 p.m. on June 12.

All voting takes place online.

Once the top six candidates make it out of the online caucuses they have to select a running mate of a different party, and one who brings ideological balance, Leonard said.

Candidates have to announce a willingness to participate in the Americans Elect process. Americans Elect won’t place a drafted candidate with no intention of running on the ballot.

Safeguards are in place to verify identities of voters and make certain people don’t corrupt the system by voting multiple times.

Leonard said Americans Elect is starting in 2012 with a process aimed only at the presidential contest. But the hope is the project is a success, and the direct-democracy tool filters down to state legislative races and even local school board contests.

“I can’t predict the future, but I do think there are enough people fed up with the way things are going,” Leonard said.

One challenge to the project, however, is that in a close race between Obama and Romney, Americans Elect could serve as a spoiler by peeling just enough votes away from one candidate to deliver the election for the other.

“We get that from both sides,” Leonard said.

She added, “I personally don’t think there’s much left to spoil.”

Most observers view any spoiler potential as remote. But, nonetheless, it looms.

As it stands, the runaway leader with support as an Americans Elect drafted candidate is Texas Republican Congressman Ron Paul. Liberal U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont also polls strongly in the “draft” category as does former Republican Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. None of these candidates has declared and won’t be eligible for voting unless they do. It’s highly unlikely any political A-listers like Bloomberg will diminish their reputations and longer-term prospects by getting drawn into a race they themselves don’t define and manage.

Of the declared candidates, former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson and Buddy Roemer, the former governor of Louisiana, are leading in the current polling.

Leonard said there is a vetting process to block candidacies from entertainers like Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart of Comedy Central who figure prominently in the recruiting efforts.

“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” Leonard said. CV

Douglas Burns is a fourth-generation Iowa newspaperman who writes for The Carroll Daily Times Herald and offers columns for Cityview.