Advocates for the Average Person
By Laura Baker, CyberWyoming
LARAMIE – Jordan “Cancer” Scott isn’t the typical presidential candidate. He isn’t campaigning. He isn’t collecting funds. You don’t hear about him in the news, until now.
Scott is a veteran, a computer engineer, and a cybersecurity professional in Colorado Springs, CO. He is an average Joe working a full time computer engineering job but is running for President as an independent. He could be any one of us.
When I met with Scott, this proclamation of presidential candidacy just brought about an eyebrow raise and a head tilt. Why did he feel compelled to run for President?
“It is more about why not,” said Scott, “For some reason our has thought it appropriate to only allow the elite upper class to represent us, but constitutionally that is not a requirement at all. You only have to be 35 and a natural citizen. So, why don’t normal people run? So my philosophy is ‘practice what you preach’ so I decided to run.”
It was his 37th birthday present to himself to get on the Colorado presidential ballot at a cost of $1000. This has comprised of his total campaign contributions so far, although he does have a Facebook page that rarely sees updates.
Scott feels the hurt is coming. “Over the past 30 years we have embedded technology into day to day functions…but that technology was built for functionality and convenience, not reliability and dependability. So that means the enemies of our nation will use it to exploit and cause harm and I don’t think our society can handle that kind of threat,” said Scott.
But that isn’t the only issue that Scott wants to bring attention. Besides being an information warfare expert, Scott claims that in US elections there are huge amounts of money that are paid to the same people. “For instance, in media advertising, someone may be running for office and they own a media advertising company, they can use campaign funds to pay the media company so they make the money back as income. If you think about that it almost feels like money laundering, especially when you take into account the small donations that aren’t tracked. And any computer programmer can write a script to make small amounts of donations repeatedly from different IP addresses, which also feels like money laundering,” said Scott.
Scott has an issue with big money. “So big money is definitely driving some of these issues, so I don’t want to participate in that. I want to do this cheaply. Bloomberg spent $100,000,000 on advertising. Why doesn’t that go to schools? Bloomberg, if he had donated $100,000,000 to schools saying vote for me it probably would have played better,” said Scott.
When asked about election fraud, Scott replied, “If I were a bad actor, I wouldn’t need votes to win. Architecturally, the private election system doesn’t work. For example, if you vote for a candidate, you have no idea how your vote got counted. There are no checks and balances. I’m not sure it is actually possible to verify that they used YOUR ballot for the count. For example, if I print 2 ballots and you mail them to me maybe I just shred it.”
To solve this problem, Scott advocates for public open records of voting. He believes it gives the average citizen the ability to check and make sure his or her vote was counted the way it should have been. Scott admits that some people may be concerned about this method because if your voting wasn’t secret, then it may be used against you. “But legally they can’t do that,” said Scott.
“Socially it creates an interesting dynamic because now you have to defend your decision to not vote, to vote party lines, or why you vote on issues. This changes the point of voting significantly because now people have to research and think and discuss and learn to discuss in public. Right now we just aren’t talking,” said Scott.
Scott continued, “There is this whole argument of the electoral college ‘not working’ and moving to the popular vote. If we were to move to the popular vote, 40% voted for ‘nobody.’ The two primary candidates only about 30% each, so technically nobody won. There should be nobody in office if the majority rules, which is an interesting concept. So, Virginia just passed a bill so that recalled elections must have verified signatures of 25% of eligible voters, not those that actually voted. So if only 40-60% voted and someone won by 20% then there would be no way to overturn the vote with a recall. Virginia’s voter turnout is currently 40-50% right now, so this could be reality. I feel this is dangerous to our democracy because they are starting to leverage registered voters who aren’t voting.“
Scott’s opinions on healthcare seem to be an eclectic mix of free market, you get what you reap, and Freakonomics. “Healthcare isn’t broken. The economics of healthcare is broken. The money isn’t going to the actual services it is going to administrative costs/non services costs. When you look at an ambulance ride and the cost, I ask why? You may get an IV, some CPR, but does it really cost that much? Mathmatically you aren’t getting the amount of money worth out of that ambulance ride,” said Scott.
“I believe in liberty and the ability to make choices but I also believe in the consequences to those choices. This goes for motorcycle helmet laws to smoking to cancer from environmental causes. I have picked dudes up off the ground from motorcycle accidents with helmets and without, but often there is no point in hurrying. Statistically, most motorcycle accidents have head injuries. So, if a guy rides a motorcycle without insurance and without a helmet and is alive but mostly braindead, then society should not pay for it. This is the type of conversation our country needs to have and we don’t talk about death enough,” said Scott.