presidential

So who thought we would get an endorsement from the President of the United States?

I guess he’s not too worried; his tenancy at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is almost up. Eight years is a pretty short lease but I’m guessing from all those gray hairs that he’ll be quite happy to take Michelle and the girls back to Chicago so he can really start piling up his post-presidential fortune.

Mr. Obama may not have mentioned us directly in his final State of the Union speech, but, let’s just put it right out there, who else could he have been talking about?

“We’ve got to make it easier to vote, not harder. We need to modernize it for the way we live now.”

Couldn’t have put it better myself. Perhaps now people will start taking The iCandidate more seriously.

Today, February 1, marks the first day of voting in the quest to select the presidential nominees for the Democrat and Republican parties, the only two viable contestants in a two-horse race to the White House.

Let me just suggest two scenarios and you can decide which one makes the most sense.

Voters in Iowa will saunter down to schools, churches, libraries and, in some cases, peoples’ houses, in 1,682 precincts across the state and in the case of the GOP, enter a straw poll usually decided by a show of hands or scraps of paper. Democrats will stand in little groups and get 30 minutes to try and persuade others to join them before the head count begins.

Or…

Nominees are set a realistic task mirroring one they may face as president involving some of the big questions of the day – terrorism, poverty, the economy – and voters watching on TV or online will then vote from the comfort of their armchairs using a secure, cutting edge high-tech app for the person who performed the best.

We know what President Obama thinks. His aides have been in touch. He can’t say it publicly, not yet anyway, but he’s been watching the show, he understands what we’re trying to do.

What about you?

Up until now, The iCandidate has been regarded more as a reality show diversion. The ratings are great, certainly higher than we dared to dream when Andy Kristoff first came up with the idea just a few short months ago, but then they were pretty good for American Idol and The Bachelor. But they were hardly going to change the world.

This is different. Obama talked a lot about hope and change and it all sounded great until he got into the Oval Office and found the system was stacked against him.

The iCandidate is a blueprint to rescue a fundamentally flawed political system. It offers everyone the opportunity to vote, irrespective of whether they follow one party or another.

Everybody has their own unique, validated iVote. By registering on the NoteStream app Book Club they will be able to cast that iVote following every challenge in The iCandidate. They will also get the opportunity to guide and advise the policies and personalities of the eight finalists.

The primaries and caucuses that still select the presidential nominees are ridiculous and are no longer representative either of America or the American people.

We have lost sight of what is important in a president. In the days of Lincoln and Washington, the presidency really stood for something and the voting system made sense for the time but times have changed and the elections have not changed with it.

Does anyone seriously believe that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the two party frontrunners going into the voting season, are the best America has to offer? A bombastic billionaire self-publicist and a woman who wants to be seen as a feminist trailblazer but who aggressively defended her womanizing husband.

It is such a critical decision for a country to make; surely we should have all the facts, not just what the parties and their puppets choose to tell us.

The iCandidate has invested millions of dollars into a cutting edge hi-tech voting system – the iVote – that is completely secure. It has chosen a medium – TV and the Internet – that is populist because that is what elections should be. We see the iCandidates, warts and all, BEFORE they are in the White House running our lives.

If there are too many warts, YOU can vote them out.

If they can deliver on the big stage on The iCandidate, there is a much greater chance they will be able to rise to the challenges on the biggest stage on Earth as President of the United States.

* Although David Mason is a member of The iCandidate Advisory Board, these comments are all his own and do not reflect the views or the policies of The iCandidate Corp.