Why a Third Party Vote is NOT a Wasted Vote

It’s just 23 days between now and Election Day when the voters of America will choose between the most disliked, unpopular major party presidential nominees in anyone’s memory. There is another option, which is to reject both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and cast a ballot for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, the Green Party’s Jill Stein or Independent Evan McMullin.

In this piece I’m going to cover two topics:

1. Why, even while assuming that you accept the premise that either Clinton or Trump will be our next Commander in Chief, there is an extraordinary ancillary benefit of voting for the Libertarian ticket of Johnson and William Weld anyway. The reason is not what you might expect and it is vital. Don’t miss point #1.
2. The extraordinarily unlikely (but not impossible) path that could propel either Johnson or McMullin to the White House (I’m not kidding).

Most people in the U.S. (and most readers of this blog) are approaching this election as a binary choice between the lesser of two evils. To me, that’s not a good enough reason to vote for somebody you feel is unfit or unqualified. Many Americans also feel this way which is why Johnson, despite two well-publicized brain farts about foreign policy, is still polling at 6% nationwide.

Anyway, the Clinton campaign is spending millions of dollars in negative advertising against Johnson and Weld out of fear of the “Nader effect.” In 2000, George W. Bush garnered a mere 537 votes more than Al Gore in the state of Florida, a stunning small margin in a state that cast nearly 6 million ballots. Meanwhile, Green Party candidate Ralph Nader got 97,488 votes. Clearly, if Nader had not been on the ballot, Gore would have won the state and he would have become the president.

If you live in a swing state (Florida, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Ohio, Iowa, or Nevada) and you truly believe that either Clinton’s policies and corruption or Trump’s unpreparedness and poor temperament are a clear and present danger to our democracy, then go ahead and vote for your lesser of two evils. Incidentally, you may notice that I did not include Pennsylvania, Georgia, or Arizona in the list of swing states even though most news organizations do. The reason is this: if Trump wins Pennsylvania, that means he’s made a massive comeback nationwide and he’ll therefore win all of the other swing states and thus the election. Similarly, if Clinton manages to win traditional Republican states like Georgia and Arizona then that means it’s a landslide election and Trump will be an even bigger loser than Mitt Romney, which will annoy him greatly.

For those of you who live in states like California, Illinois, Connecticut and New York, Hillary is going to win no matter what you do. If you live in Texas or Alabama, Trump is going to win there. Therefore, if you live in a state where the outcome is obvious and predetermined, you have the luxury of making a protest vote without worrying that you’ll tilt the election the other way as with the Nader effect.

So here is point #1. If the ticket of Johnson and Weld earn 5% of the vote nationwide then, by law, the Libertarian party will be accorded major party status. This means that in the next presidential election of 2020 (which is 1,484 days away, but who’s counting?), the Libertarian party will receive millions of dollars in federal matching funds and automatic ballot access. The Republican and Democratic parties have had a stranglehold on our electoral process for over 150 years and it’s time for a third choice. In many ways the parties today have moved further apart than they’ve ever been; the GOP is lurching to the right and the Dems are lurching left. One wonders if John F. Kennedy or Ronald Reagan could have won presidential primaries in the current political environment.

Regardless of how you feel about the candidate himself, getting Gary Johnson to 5% of the national vote may have enormously positive long-term ramifications that go far beyond this one election.

In many ways, the Libertarian party stands squarely in the middle of our two party system. Johnson, who refers to his party as “fiscally conservative but socially inclusive” likes to say that most Americans are libertarians but just don’t realize it. On national defense, the party believes in an impenetrable military might but an avoidance of foreign wars and regime change. As a Republican, I’m not crazy about the open-borders part of the Libertarian platform but you can’t have everything. As one who believes in a woman’s right to choose and that we shouldn’t be selling high-capacity gun clips, I’ve never been thrilled about some of the parts of the GOP platform either. A legitimate centrist middle-ground party, in presidential and down-ballot races, could be an effective check on the two major parties from careening too far to the left or right.

Gary Johnson is not a perfect candidate, not by a long shot. As it is with Trump-Pence and Clinton-Kaine, my opinion is that the ticket would be superior if Weld was at the top. Still, you have a ticket of two Governors who served two terms as Republicans in blue states (Johnson in New Mexico, Weld in Massachusetts). Johnson is weak on foreign nation facts (don’t bet on him in a Jeopardy contest on “foreign leaders for $200), but he has a clearly defined position on anti-interventionism. The number one trait that Johnson has that Clinton and Trump do not is that he is fundamentally honest. Lying comes as easily as breathing to Hillary and Donald but not to the quirky Johnson.

When he is continually asked about people “wasting” their votes on a candidate who can’t win, Johnson’s line is that it’s a “wasted vote to vote for someone you don’t believe in.” Of course he’s talking about Trump and Clinton but that’s also how a lot of #NeverTrump and #NeverHillary folks feel about him. The stakes are higher for his party than this one election.

So I’m going to make this point again: if you’re having a hard time voting for the two major party nominees, go ahead and make a statement that you do not have to make that binary choice. Decades from now, when your grandchildren are studying the deplorable 2016 election in school, you’ll be able to proudly tell them that you chose neither Clinton or Trump and helped create a legitimate third party in America.

(By the way, you’ll notice I’m not talking about the Green Party candidate Jill Stein here. The reason is simply that there is not one poll showing her as having a chance to reach the 5% threshold nationwide).

Now onto point #2. The premise of the first point is that a vote for Johnson-Weld is not really a vote for the two men per se but instead a vote to reject the notion that we only can choose between two parties. I will point out, however, that it is possible, just possible, that Gary Johnson could actually become the next president. How in the world could this happen?

There’s only one way and that is for Johnson to win at least one state and for Clinton and Trump to be in a virtual tie in the others. In order to win the presidency, a candidate must win 270 Electoral College votes. In the previously mentioned 2000 election, Bush narrowly won with 271 electoral votes to Gore’s 266. If Nader had won just one state, the election would have been thrown into the House of Representatives, per the Constitution. Nader didn’t even come remotely close to winning any states so his impact was limited to throwing Florida (and the election) to Bush.

How could such a scenario play out in 2016? Well, there are two parts to this unlikely story. First, Trump would need to mount a fairly significant comeback to pull the national race virtually even. The controversial billionaire is currently engulfed in scandal after scandal regarding his alleged unwanted sexual advances, which has seen his poll numbers drop. These are the four nationwide polls taken in the aftermath of both the Access Hollywood videotape scandal and last Sunday’s debate.

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If you’re a Trump supporter, the Rasmussen poll gives you hope. This poll has been fairly consistent in showing higher numbers for the reality TV star. All polls are weighted based on turnout model and it’s possible that almost all the major polls’ turnout models are wrong and Rasmussen’s is right. One theory whose validity will not be known until Election Day is that there is a “silent” Trump vote that is not reflected in the public polls. Is it possible that there are untold millions of people who are embarrassed to admit it but are privately planning to vote for Trump?  Of course it’s possible. This is like the Brexit scenario. This summer all polling showed that the citizens in the United Kingdom were prepared to vote to “remain” in the European Union but the result was the opposite and the “leave” voters prevailed. It should be noted, however, that Rasmussen’s last poll in 2012 had Mitt Romney winning and statistics guru Nate Silver (from www.fivethirtyeight.com). gives Rasmussen a C+ for accuracy and the others with grades from A+ to A-.

Regardless, there’s another debate in which the Donald can right the ship and it’s not as if Hillary doesn’t have extensive vulnerabilities. The endless drip of WikiLeaked emails from members of her campaign staff and those detailing quotes from her $200,000 paid speeches continue to embarrass, hint at corruption and play into Trump’s “rigged system” narrative. The feeling here is that there would need to be a bombshell email about Clinton for her to not march into the Oval Office.

So it’s my belief that Trump will not be able to dig his way out of the grave he’s in and his only chance is a “smoking gun” email reveal about Clinton that is impossible for the media to ignore. It is only in this situation, where both Trump and Clinton become so unpalatable that more voters are desperate for another choice, where it’s remotely plausible that Johnson could win a state or two (the most likely candidate being his home state of New Mexico). So here is the math that would create an electoral gridlock that would send the presidential contest to the House of Representatives.

• Clinton wins the states she’s expected to win (including New Hampshire) except New Mexico: 267 electoral votes
• Trump wins the states he’s supposed to win and the toss-up states (Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Nevada and Iowa): 266 electoral votes
• Johnson wins New Mexico only: 5 electoral votes

If nobody gets 270 electoral votes, the House picks the next president by an arcane Constitutional formula in which each state delegation gets one vote. Therefore, the 51 House members from California have the same voting power combined as the one House member from Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Delaware, Vermont. Everyone knows that the GOP holds a significant majority in the House (247-to-186) but the edge in state delegations is even greater.

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The point of this boring piece of fantasy is that, in this unlikely event of a “no majority” outcome, the Republicans will decide who the next president and it certainly won’t be Hillary Clinton. With a normal Republican candidate, the GOP’s House delegation verdict would undoubtedly elect their party’s nominee. But Donald Trump of course is not a normal candidate. Considering that about 25% of elected Republican officials are already off the Trump Train, it is possible that the Republicans would look to the two-term Republican Governor from New Mexico. Remember, in this scenario Clinton would have no chance so the Democratic delegations would certainly choose Johnson over Trump. Thus, it would take just 9 of the 33 GOP delegations to jump off the train to elect President Gary Johnson. Also, since it is newly elected House that would break this deadlock it is possible that the Republicans would not retain such an overwhelming majority.

Incidentally, if this actually happened Mike Pence or Tim Kaine would become Johnson’s VP because this arcane Constitutional process empowers the Senate to pick the vice-president but they can only choose from the top two candidates from the Electoral College. Which party will control the Senate after November 8th is still very much in doubt.

Finally, this implausible scenario also contains the theoretical possibility that virtually unknown independent candidate Evan McMullin could become president this way. In fact, one could argue that this sequence of events is more plausible (or less fantastical) in the case of McMullin. The 40-year old McMullin, a former CIA operative whose selling point is that he has vastly more anti-terrorism experience than any of the other candidates, is only on the ballot in 11 states. One of those states, however, is Utah, and McMullin is a Mormon, a native of the Beehive state and a BYU graduate. The political world was stunned earlier this week when a Y2 Analytics poll showed Trump and Clinton tied at 26% with McMullin just 4 points behind at 22%. Other polls released since then have showed Trump with a statistically significant lead.

Utah is the one Republican state that has continually rejected Trump from the beginning. Favorite son Mitt Romney has never been with Trump and Senator Mike Lee, Governor Gary Herbert, former Governor Jon Huntsman and Representatives Jason Chaffetz and Mia Love all withdrew their support from the Donald after the release of the lewd Access Hollywood tape.

Now, if somehow Evan McMullin were to win the state of Utah, that would signal to me that Trump had become so weak nationwide that he wouldn’t be remotely close to producing the Electoral College deadlock required to elect a third party nominee.

I hope you all had fun learning about one of the arcane political procedures embodied in our Constitution. It will almost certainly not happen but it’s fun to talk about, just like it’s enjoyable to watch a science fiction movie.

I’ll finish with my main point. If you’re turned off by both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, vote for Gary Johnson. Vote for him to help him get the 5% needed to turn the Libertarian party into a legitimate third party in our nation.

Thanks for reading!

Chris Bodig