80 days from now, on April 17 2012, Americans Elect is scheduled to hold its first online-only vote for its delegates to choose between drafted presidential candidates.
The official Americans Elect rules mandate that efforts to draft candidates must build support through the Americans Elect website. Originally to have debuted on November 6 2011, the capability for people to actually draft candidates and get them qualified for the Americans Elect ballot has been referred to as “coming soon” and “very soon” on the Americans Elect “Candidates” page for three months. As of today, there is no such capability on the Americans Elect website.
Whenever Americans Elect gets around to creating a system for people to draft candidates, the official Americans Elect rules state that the draft efforts will have to collect either 10,000 clicks of support from registered and verified delegates (for insider candidates) or 50,000 clicks (for outsider candidates). That task doesn’t have to be done by April 17 (80 days from now). That task has to be done by April 3 (just 66 days from now).
As of today, there is not enough activity on Americans Elect for any draft contender to be brought onto a nominating ballot. The top ten candidates taken together are only being tracked by 32,538 registered delegates. That’s not enough activity for an outside draft candidate to be recognized, even if every single registered delegate agreed on a candidate. The top single candidate Ron Paul, is being tracked by (not necessarily supported by) just 8710 registered delegates. That’s not enough for him to be drafted, even if everyone who tracks Ron Paul actually clicks to officially support him being drafted.
Tomorrow, there will be 79 days before the ballot, and just 65 days for draft committees to surmount 10,000 pro-insider clicks or 50,000 pro-outsider clicks. It’s already too late for this to be accomplished in a no-money, grassroots fashion. The window for even the most well-endowed political operations to draft candidates in the Americans Elect is closing fast.