New organisation wants to challenge America's two-party system, but has drawn critical fire over the source of its funding

Elliot Ackerman has a vision. Seated at a huge boardroom table in a fancy Manhattan advertising agency, he speculated on who might win America's presidential election next year.

He does not dream of Barack Obama's second term. Or a Republican candidate snatching back the White House for the Grand Old Party.

Instead, he hoped for a third candidate to emerge victorious, destroying the two-party system that has dominated American politics since the Civil War. "Fewer and fewer Americans are represented by the ideologies of the two major parties. Nature abhors a vacuum and there is a vacuum at the centre of American politics," Ackerman said.

Which is where he believes he comes in. He is chief operating officer of Americans Elect, a new internet-based organisation that intends to shatter America's two-party system. The idea is simple.

Americans Elect's website will allow ordinary Americans to participate in an online "convention" in June that will pick a presidential candidate to run in the 2012 race.

In the meantime, the organisation will already have done all the groundwork of collecting the vast amount of signatures and filing the paperwork to get that candidate on the ballot in all 50 states.

Usually, that costs around $15m, prohibiting anyone but a wealthy individual. But Americans Elect, which has already raised more than $20m, is now well on the way to completing the administrative side of its mission.

In short: Americans Elect is not a third party; it bills itself as a painless, free way for an independent candidate to run for the White House.

"We are providing the infrastructure for these candidates to try and get our nomination. That's all," said Joshua Levine, the group's chief technology officer.

The implications are sending shockwaves through America's political establishment as it comes to realise the group is deadly serious. After all, by the end of the year Americans Elect expects to have 2.55m of the total 2.9m signatures it needs to achieve ballot access.

Some experts are already won over. "I think it is going to have a potentially huge impact on the election next year," said Mark McKinnon, a former top adviser to 2008 Republican candidate Senator John McCain.

However, the group is also starting to draw some critical fire, not least for the way it is funded. It is run out of a Washington office with its New York operation piggybacking in Levine's LBi New York digital marketing firm, sharing a plush building near Fifth Avenue with fashion guru Tory Burch.

The original funding for the project has come from 50 or so wealthy individuals, including Ackerman's father, Peter Ackerman, the head of wealth management firm Rockport Capital. Other known backers, such as Kirk Rostron and Melvin Andrews, are often also from the world of finance, especially hedge funds. Another backer is Jim Holbrook, president of a trade association that lobbies for the marketing industry. Many other backers remain a secret due to the group having registered itself as a non-profit and thus having no obligation to reveal donors.

Jim Cook, editor of an online political website, Irregular Times, has written repeatedly to the group's organisers asking for it's financial details to be made publicly available. He has received no reply. He has even pitched up in person at the group's Washington offices where he was turned away by a security guard.

Cook says that treatment contrasts strongly with the way its wealthy backers have sought support from other high net worth individuals. "With the well-connected and well-heeled, Americans Elect has maintained lines of communication. It's with the little people ... that Americans Elect isn't communicating," Cook wrote on his website.

That sort of thing has raised eyebrows with critics looking for ulterior motives, suspicious of a group with such wealthy support. But Ackerman dismissed the idea that the group was too secretive or a front for influence by the rich. "A lot of donors have come forward. Hopefully, others will too," he said.

He also pointed out that the initial sums of money behind the group will also be paid back as smaller donations comes in, until no single individual has donated more than $10,000. Backers say that will remove any sense that Americans Elect could be financially beholden to one wealthy person.

But critics point out it also means later, smaller donors are essentially paying off the loans of millionaire financiers. Huffington Post blogger Jason Linkins has slammed the group. "Pretty much a bunch of dyed-in-the-wool one percenters," he wrote recently.

More than 300,000 people have already registered online to become Americans Elect delegates and so get a vote in the group's June convention.

Selecting the candidate is complex. The group's computers use a questionnaire to match delegates' views with politicians and other figures with whom they might sympathise. It is then up to delegates to crystalise around figures who might want to run. Names already being bandied around include right-wing figures like Condoleezza Rice and left-wing figures like Senator Russ Feingold.

They also have a wealth of independents like General David Petraeus, independent Senator Joe Lieberman, newsman Tom Brokaw, Starbucks chief executive Howard Schultz and New York mayor Mike Bloomberg.

Some of these names would clearly turn down any attempt to draft them as a candidate. But others might be persuaded by the opportunity of a free shot at the White House. Yet more, like current moderate Republican candidate Jon Huntsman, might join if defeated in the Republican primaries.

And a few are already actively saying yes. One of those is Buddy Roemer, a former governor of Louisiana. Roemer is in many ways a classic example of the sort of cross-party figure Americans Elect wants to produce. He is a Republican but has also embraced many of the complaints of the Occupy Wall Street movement and become a popular figure on left-wing talk shows on MSNBC.

Next year, as the race between Obama and his Republican opponent solidifies, candidates will declare themselves or agree to get drafted. An April round of voting will winnow the field down to six candidates by May. Those names will then go to the June convention where a winner will eventually be picked by delegates.

The victorious candidate will then pick a running mate, with just one proviso: if they are a Democrat or Republican, they cannot choose someone from their own party. "The ticket that will come out of this process will be a non-partisan ticket," said Ackerman.

There is also a proviso that if the emerging candidate is not seen as balanced enough then a committee within Americans Elect can veto it; subject only to overturn by two thirds of delegates.

That seems to back the group's aims of providing a genuine alternative. But it has also lead to criticisms the group is undemocratic and secretive and far too influenced by its unelected leadership.

Other concerns include its cyber-security and how it will vet delegates to make sure they are who they say they are. Richard Hasen, a political scientist at the University of California, recently criticised the group in a column on Politico. "Rather than gush about this group, I fear many aspects of it: its secrecy; the uncertain security for its internet election and, most important, the lack of democracy in its system," he said.

But Americans Elect does not seem to mind the attacks. The increasing attention, and almost daily cyber attacks on their website, are seen as signs they are starting to shake up America's establishment.

History also suggests a credible third candidate could do well this year. Many Democrats are disillusioned with Obama, while some Republicans are dismayed at their party's lurch to the right. It is impossible to know which party would be impacted more. Republicans still complain the independent runs of Ross Perot in the 1990s ensured Bill Clinton won both his presidential races by splitting the right-wing vote. Meanwhile Democrats carp that Ralph Nader's run in 2000 siphoned away crucial left-wing support from Al Gore and gave the country the presidency of George W Bush.

Of course, Ackerman does not see Americans Elect as a simple spoiler in 2012. He wants the group's eventual candidate to win. "I am not working here every day to lose," he said.