WASHINGTON, D.C., JANUARY 26, 2012 – AmericansElect.org has been selected as a 2012 Interactive Awards Finalist in the experimental category by South by Southwest (SXSW), the annual music, film, and interactive conference and festival held in Austin, Texas. Americans Elect is on the cutting edge of political reform – changing the way we nominate a President of the United States, and also emerging as one of the best new websites in the marketplace today.
“Americans Elect uniquely offers everyone an online way to participate, regardless of party affiliation, in political discussion and debate, and results in a balanced ticket that is on the ballot nationwide,” said Joshua S. Levine, Chief Technology Officer of Americans Elect….
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Xecky Gilchrist
Americans Elect uniquely offers everyone an online way to participate, regardless of party affiliation, in political discussion and debate
…and reserves the right to ignore all of that completely!
C Nelson Reilly
Whipping Post! Freebird!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
The Totebaggers seek to form a Junior League?
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
I wish I’d saved my carry out Margarita for now that I’m reading this.
gravie
I had an interesting conversation with a very nice man who works for Americans Elect on a train ride up from DC to NY. I asked him why, if they really wanted to change electoral politics in this country, they didn’t focus on congressional races instead of the presidential race. “Well,” he said, smiling a little bit sheepishly, “The presidential race is easier for us.” Yeah, that’s what I thought.
joeyess
I’ve attended and showcased at SXSW. I have now lost all respect for the event. What’s next? A Thomas Friedman reading seminar complete with bongos, coffee and European cigarettes?
Redshift
Sigh…
How interactive are SXSW presentations? I can’t remember. If they are, I hope there will be people who will raise the point of their antidemocratic governance and their secretive funding.
piratedan
and for just 25.95 you too can participate and allow your vote to matter!
pseudonymous in nc
SXSW Interactive decided to milk the cow for all it’s worth a few years ago. Now there are too many tickets sold, venues scattered all over Austin, hotels booked up nine months in advance and private rentals going at the kind of rates charged in Augusta during Masters week. This is just another example.
Villago Delenda Est
Shorter SXSW: “Ooh, shiny!”
Little Boots
Evan Bayh will not be president.
Sorry, America, let the dream die.
Citizen_X
Your move, Anonymous.
Gin & Tonic
Can you participate without paying them money? If so, I might wish to participate just to encourage them to nominate Lyndon LaRouche. I think they deserve him.
beltane
Doesn’t sound very cutting edge to me unless you’re one of those people who think George Will is insightful, David Brooks sensible and Tom Friedman provocative.
Villago Delenda Est
@pseudonymous in nc:
Augusta, GA during Masters Week is hell on Earth. The Signal School, brilliantly, used to try to usher in new officers, for basic and advanced officer training, during Masters Week.
Bad, bad, BAD idea. No place to put these people because every room for hire was GONE during that week, as the entire planet (or so it seems) descends on Augusta like a horde of locusts.
Little Boots
And I don’t think Doug is as angry as he’d like us to think.
or as black. or female.
handy
Boy a Michael Bloomberg-Olympia Snow ticket would be just dyno-MITE!
handy
And just think, with the SXSW connection they could get that electro-folk-nextwave band from Brooklyn to play at their inauguration. You know, that band where the members all have beards.
Mark S.
Could they maybe spend some of that $20 million on their website? What the hell do any of these numbers mean?
Donut
I’m not braggin’, I’m just sayin’, I have actually had the pleasure of playing at SXSW a few times, back in the 90s and early 2000s. The fuck is this? It used to be solid days of debauchery and music, wall to wall. Bleh.
RossInDetroit
Interactive, online and utterly irrelevant. AmericansElect.org is the MySpace of politics.
beltane
@Mark S.: I think those numbers mean that AmericansElect has been freeped by Paultards.
Donut
Oh, ok, I went to the web site and I see sponsors now include Miller Lite, Chevy, Pepsi, Doritos, freecreditscore . com, esurance. Oh well. Say la vee.
beltane
The website looks like an old person’s idea of what young people think is hip.
Mark S.
@Donut:
Sorry, grandpa, but that’s not what the kids of today want. They want radical centrism and seminars with David Brooks. You just take your sex, drugs, and rock n roll to the nursing home.
Donut
: head hanging low, shoulders slumped, shuffling off to bed :
Gin & Tonic
I like where if you mouse over “Find and draft candidates who share your views” it says “In beta now.” I thought that was the whole fucking point of their “organization.” If “find and draft candidates” isn’t in production then what are they doing?
This thing is pathetic.
JGabriel
Speaking of hipsters, I have just discovered that I am no longer even remotely hip — I’ve never even heard of the band that won this year’s Village Voice Pazz & Jop Album Poll (700 music critics).
Damn.
FYI, it’s tUnE-yArDs. So far, I like what I’m hearing:
Bizness (Official Video)
Gangsta
Bizness (Live @ Soundscape Music, Toronto — Very Charming)
.
Donut
In all seriousness, I got nothing against what the SXSW folks have done with their fest.
But I think it is telling that the original SXSW festival started as a way to provide showcases for indie bands that had, at best, regional followings, but had yet to break nationally. It really was pretty grass roots, at one time, However, this Americans Elect thing is pretty much the ultimate astro-turf deal, so for SXSW to pimp it is really one significant flip for SXSW, in terms of what it originally represented. But again, whatever, no skin off my back. If they wanna help Pepsi and Doritos sell their junk, and help Americans Elect do…whatever it is they are going to do, then more power to ’em, I guess.
kvenlander
I keep wondering if American Select is a ratfncking operation, and if so, whose? Or is it just some DC political hacks getting on the grifter train?
But I would fully support Ronulans freeping their selection process.
Donut
@JGabriel:
I had to Google them. Not that I mind it, but I guess I am even less hip than you because I wasn’t able to find time to to check them out further. I read their Wiki page, thought it was probably interesting, but then I thought, “I have a lot of work to do,” so that took priority and I forgot all about it. Now it’s late and I am totally too lazy to get up offa the couch to go find my headphones, since I can’t listen properly while the kids and wife are sleeping. Yeah, so, anyway, that’s that.
Spaghetti Lee
Man, I just don’t get it. What is it about the myth of some glorious, ‘radical-centrist’, shining white knight that weighs so heavily on some people? What bold and ingenious yet completely non-partisan ideas do they think are waiting in the offing? What mystery candidate do they think is being ignored? Is it just that people are so desperate to not be accused of having sold out to one party or another? Do they think they’re smarter than everyone else? The mind of the Friedmanite rad-cent Totebagger is just a mystery to me.
I mean, if none of the available candidates suit you, whatever. Don’t vote, vote for a write-in, whatever. But this whole charade that this hipster-huckster alliance has somehow unlocked some big world-changing revolutionary idea about politics with their grandstanding just grates at my nerves.
wasabi gasp
In Kiss Army I knew who I was fighting for.
kay
I love that the Ron Paul people have infiltrated Americans Elect.
I also love that people who call themselves Americans Elect only recognize one branch of government, and it’s the executive branch.
It’s the natural and inevitable culmination of the obsession with the presidency, which is perfect for the target audience, which is people who only pay attention once every four years.
The “balanced ticket” will fix everything, by decree.
Tonal Crow
@Citizen_X:
Yah. Internet election? As bad as things already are, imagine computer viruses, hackers, and foreign three-letter agencies electing Presidential candidates. The mind reels.
Donut
@Spaghetti Lee:
“Americans Elect does not support or oppose any candidate or candidate committee”
That’s pretty much it, right there. It’s a fucking pile of beaten egg whites, served on dry white toast, with a side of raw cauliflower and a glass of warm water
Spaghetti Lee
I suppose I have met lots of people, middle to middle-left, who would basically agree with everything Barack Obama would have to offer, but for whatever reason, there’s just some huge mental block between that and calling themselves a Democrat. They’re worried about looking uncool, afraid of being called partisan, just cranky rebellious types who hate the idea of belonging to a group, I don’t know what. It’s weird. They’re the ones who are, I guess, the prime target for a group like this. People with liberal instincts tricked into disbelieving left-wing stuff because they’ve been soaked in a media environment that at most outright favors the right, and at least never completely shuts them out of the dialogue.
And I don’t think it applies to right-wingers. I’ve met proud Republicans, and people who think even the Republicans are too liberal, but I haven’t met many real right-wingers (mealymouthed twerps like Brooks don’t count for the purposes of this exercise), who do the ‘both sides are equally to blame’ dance, and fewer still who have an odd reflex to downplay and criticize the Republican Party, even if they agree with it pretty much all the time.
Donut
https://secure.americanselect.org/my-colors
Oh my god. It has color coding. My kindergartner would be bored with this.
Okay, I’m done. Bye.
Tonal Crow
So what’ll it be? Presidential nominee David Brooks and VP Joe Lieberman leading us into the promised land of “centrist” milk and honey?
Spaghetti Lee
@Donut:
Then what is it fucking for? Is it just like one of those look-at-me-I’m-so-different cultural markers?
MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson
@beltane:
The Andrew Sullivan demographic?
Donut
@Spaghetti Lee:
It’s for a suitable amount of Hayekian modesty returning to our politics, bro. Duh! They wanna give the plebes a new white guy super awesome rich above the fray preznit out of it. Guys like that are always non-partisan altruists, and love America with all their heart, and they just want what’s best for you. Just like your dad. See also: Friedman, Tom.
If you can’t see that, you are obviously too partisan.
JGabriel
Donut:
At least that would some health value. Americans Select is more like what you would have left if you took those same ingredients, then ran’em through a centrifuge to suck out all the nutrients.
.
Jay in Oregon
@Gin & Tonic:
It’s like the Iowa Caucus this year; AS will take everyone’s input, and then announce the “centrist” candidate that they want everyone to believe they picked.
Lyrebird
@Donut: And of course social issues are purple!
I don’t have a kindergartener, but I have colorblind relatives… somehow immigration is crimson and energy is cheap-red-t-shirt red. Hmmm, “very very meaningful.”
cthulhu
@kvenlander:
My sense is that it is neither but rather a bunch of hedge fund multi-millionaires who simply “know better.”
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
sxsw has come to live up to the sobriquet sucks by sucks less. there really is nothing left of it. that is the thing that has always been the tragic flaw of indie, successful indie cannot stay indie. hence the drive towards obscuria.
americanselect however is about as indie as hootie and the blowfish was alt-rock. if one remembers the earliest hootie, it was pitched as credibly “new” music, though they mostly attracted people with the shared experience of having shown up to college with billy joel cds in their case.
they will get some clueless faction, and they will get the suburban whites who don’t want to be seen as those suburban whites, basically if its astroturf then its programmed to make the obama voters out to be ethnics and beatniks, and occupiers, and ne’erdowells, thus scaring the white crossover back into like for the grand ole party.
in short, its cynical righties who want the whities to stay, even if they stray, so maybe they can have one or two good runs left in the old formula.
Mike
I think this thing should be freeped with Ron Paul supporters to get him on the ballot in all 50 states. That would be a wonderful way to win an election–for us, of course.
PanurgeATL
@Mark S.:
Well, that has been one of the themes of the “alternative” scene (in the largest sense), from “straightedge” to Joel Stein’s Time essays, right down to the scene’s embrace of Beatnik over Hippie. It’s amazing that the scene has lasted as long as it has, and this fan of Ye Olde Progge Rocke can’t help but feel some Schadenfreude over the scene’s realization that indie-rock can be “co-opted”, too. So here’s the question: If “co-optation” earned ’70s rock the death penalty, why do punk and indie get a pass? End it, already, or let the rest of us back in.