Prominent Democrat Endorses Third-Party Group Even as Republicans wage a bitter, intra-party feud for the right to challenge President Obama, a group called Americans Elect is steadily building support - and a 50-state infrastructure - for a bipartisan ticket that could challenge both parties for the White House. That effort will get a fresh push on Tuesday from David Boren, a former Democratic senator and governor from Oklahoma who backed Mr. Obama in 2008 but says he is now looking for a way to provide "electric shock therapy" to the political system. "The country is going to really be in deep trouble if we don't act soon," Mr. Boren, who is now president of the University of Oklahoma, said in an interview with The Caucus. I think this is really a cry from many of us who are really concerned for the future of the country. Mr. Boren is part of a small, but growing cadre of politicians from both sides of the aisle who are expressing displeasure with the political system - and the political gridlock it is producing. Just last week, Jon M. Huntsman Jr., the former governor of Utah and candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, voiced support for a third party, saying that the two-party system was broken. The negative and personal character attacks being flung by the Republican presidential candidates is adding to Mr. Boren's outrage at the process. On Tuesday, he will announce that he is endorsing the Americans Elect effort. As noted earlier by Richard W. Stevenson in The New York Times, the Americans Elect group is planning to nominate a bipartisan ticket - a presidential candidate from one party and a vice-presidential running mate from another - in the hopes of returning to an era when the two parties worked effectively together. An online process will choose six finalists in May, each of whom will pick a running mate from another party. And then online voting will conclude in June with a two-person ticket that organizers say will be on the ballot in all 50 states in November. Officials at the group said Monday that they had collected 2.4 million signatures and have ensured a place on the ballot in 16 states, including California. They have finished collecting signatures in another 13 states and say they are confident in their success. Mr. Boren's comments on Tuesday will come as the group presents its signatures to get on the ballot in his home state of Oklahoma. But logistical concerns are only part of the battle. To have an impact, the Americans Elect effort must earn the respect and the blessings of big-name, establishment figures in both parties who are willing to risk the ire of their friends and colleagues by considering the possibility of a third ticket. Mr. Boren took pains to say that his endorsement of Americans Elect does not mean that he necessarily will support the group's presidential ticket. "If Americans Elect produces a ticket that is not well qualified, that I don't think has the strength to bring the country together, it's certainly possible that I would support President Obama's re-election," Mr. Boren said. But that sentiment alone is likely to be seen as a blunt message by Mr. Obama's re-election team in Chicago. Mr. Boren served as a Democratic governor in the late 1970s and then was a Democratic senator from 1979 to 1994. He currently serves as the co-chair of Mr. Obama's Intelligence Advisory Board. He praised Mr. Obama's national security successes and said that his endorsement of the Americans Elect group is not meant as a criticism of the president. But at the same time, he said he no longer had any confidence that electing either a Democratic or Republican ticket would restore the sense of political comity that prevailed during much of his time in the Senate. "What we have really seen is the inability of either party to reach across the aisle as we used to and reach a meeting of the minds," he said. The most important ability the next president must have is to really bring the two parties together and make the two-party system work again in a way that it did 20 or 25 years ago. There is deep suspicion among Republican and Democratic strategists that the Americans Elect effort is secretly aimed at helping one party or the other. Mr. Boren said his friends in both parties had whispered to him their conspiracy theories. Republicans tell him the group is part of a plot to re-elect Mr. Obama. Democrats tell him they believe it's a front group to put a Republican in the White House next year. "It's neither," he said, adding that he found interesting the "knee-jerk" reactions from both sides. Mr. Boren said he had no interest in being on a ticket himself. And he declined to offer names of some people he said he knew to be considering running under the group's banner in the fall. But, he said, "I would be surprised if we did not have people who would be viewed as highly experienced." "There are some very serious people thinking about entering the race through this process," he said. Among the people who are often mentioned is Michael R. Bloomberg, the billionaire mayor of New York who dropped his Republican affiliation several years ago to become an independent. Mr. Bloomberg and his aides have long played coy about the possibility of a presidential run. Others already involved in the group or mentioned as possible candidates include Christine Todd Whitman, a moderate Republican who served as governor of New Jersey, and Erskine Bowles, who served as White House chief of staff under Bill Clinton and was the president of the University of North Carolina for five years. Buddy Roemer, who ran unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination, announced this month that he would seek to lead the Americans Elect ticket this year. The group says that more than 2.6 million people have visited its Web site and that about 380,000 people have signed up to be "delegates" to the online convention that will pick the presidential ticket in June. The group has 460,000 Facebook fans. Mr. Boren said that his discussions with the organizers of Americans Elect suggested that they shared a desire for a ticket that would embrace long-term fiscal reform, seek to pass a constitutional amendment to bar corporate contributions to politicians and appoint a bipartisan cabinet once elected. But he conceded that the online community could choose a different kind of ticket that he would be unable to support. "It could happen, and if it does, it wouldn't be something that I support," Mr. Boren said. But he said that even if the Americans Elect ticket failed to win in November, the impact on the two major parties could be impressive. He said the mere presence of a third option for voters might encourage the creation of a bipartisan caucus in the Congress and a new willingness to work together. "The American people have been saying, "We wish we had a third choice, we wish we had a third way,"" Mr. Boren said. The question is, he added, "Are they really going to vote that way?"