Lawrence Lessig's White House tilt hits crowdfunding goal

Law professor and internet luminary Lawrence Lessig will run for the US Presidency after hitting his US$1million crowdfunding goal.

Lessig announced his conditional candidacy, and a platform to take money out of US politics, in early August. A week later, Wikipedian Jimbo Wales clambered aboard the bandwagon.

Both admitted the bandwagon was rickety and had no chance of rolling into the White House, but feel that Lessig's platform to “fix democracy” was worth advancing even with a futile campaign … if you, the people, stumped up US$1million in a crowdfunding campaign.

You, the people, happily provided that sum, so Lessig will run.

The campaigns's even attracted sufficient attention that Lessig feels he may be eligible for public funding in some US States. The candidate is optimistic that recent opinion polls suggests he may also have attracted enough voter interest to be considered for an appearance in the Democratic Party's televised debates. Don't get too excited at that prospect: the relevant polling has Lessig attracting one per cent of the Democratic vote, well behind Hilary Clinton's 55 per cent, Bernie Sanders' 19 per cent and even the five, two and two per cent shares attributed to Jim Webb, Lincoln Chafee and Martin O'Malley.

Lessig, however, thinks that an internet-based campaign can build over time. It'll need to: the Iowa caucuses, traditionally the first of the many elections used to select presidential candidates, takes place on February 1st, 2016. ®