The Pulse: Third party to break ground on electronic nomination

In 1984, I campaigned to be an elected alternate delegate (from Pennsylvania's Eighth Congressional District) to the Republican National Convention in Dallas. The process required that I get elector signatures for my name to appear on the ballot, solicit the party endorsement at numerous candidate screenings, and win an election at the ballot box.

The world has changed, and elections should change, too. Today, Americans earn college credits online, shop online, read news online, and view school grades online. The time has come to nominate presidential candidates online. One seemingly well-organized group agrees.

Last Sunday, Americans Elect was the beneficiary of attention lavished by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. He reported that the group sought to nominate a credible third-party candidate to appear on the ballot in all 50 states next year, and that the nomination would be made entirely via the Internet.

Visitors to the website are asked to rank seven issues in order of personal importance (for me: the economy, foreign policy, energy, immigration, health care, education, and social issues) and answer seven more specific questions about those issues. Completing that exercise made me a delegate to the group's online convention planned for June.

According to the website, the effort is "open to any qualified candidate and any registered voter - no matter their party. We have no ties to any political group - left, right, or center. We don't promote any issues, ideology, or candidates. None of our funding comes from special interests or lobbyists. Our only goal is to put a directly nominated ticket on the ballot in 2012."

"What we're going to be doing is holding the first-ever nonpartisan, secure online nominating process," said Elliot Ackerman, Americans Elect's chief operating officer. "Any American voter can be a delegate to that process, and the ticket that comes out of the process is going to be on the ballot in all 50 states."

This opportunity might have particular appeal in closed-primary states like Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware, where independents can't participate in the nomination process.

"We are looking to engage the American people in a process that is completely open and non-prescriptive," Ackerman told me.

The process he speaks of is well under way, as more than 1.75 million people have already become delegates at AmericansElect.org

What do these people have in common?