What about Evan McMullin?

Last updated on: October 14, 2016 at 8:22 am by Jane the Actuary

What about Evan McMullin? 2016-10-14T08:22:29-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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Yeah, I know, it’s nuts, but what do you think about his campaign? And would you consider voting for him? (Fun fact: his website encourages everyone to write him in, even in states where it was too late to register him as an “official” write in candidate, on the basis that, what the heck, if a miracle happens and he gets electoral votes from any state, he could press the case for the inclusion of those votes even from those “too late” states.)

No, I don’t really have anything to say about him. But I’m so tired of Trump and Clinton that his campaign is seeming less and less crazy.

UPDATE:

Funny, the above was motivated by an article that McMullin is polling at 20% in Utah, which puts him in striking distance of electoral votes in a four-way race. Not this one in particular, from Hot Air, but there were multiple with the same flavor. And shortly after posting that, I saw links to a FiveThirtyEight piece on the slim but not impossible odds of McMullin winning the presidency: first, by taking Utah and being the third-place finisher in an outcome in which no candidate gets a majority of the electoral votes, and then garnering electoral votes in a compromise selection in the electoral college.

So Go Utah! We’re counting on you. But it’s a tricky thing: what should the strategy be of voters rooting for this outcome?

Of course, Utahans should vote for McMullin.

Blue-staters and Red-staters in states where Clinton or Trump, respectively are quite far ahead, can vote for McMullin just to retain some dignity in the voting booth. After all, his campaign slogan, and justification for a last-minute campaign, is “it’s never too late to do the right thing,” and his primary pitch to voters is simply, “vote your conscience.”

But how does one, in a battleground state, ensure that, in whatever small way, one contributes to furthering his chances?

In a very real way, you can justifiably vote for him regardless of the close nature of the race. Just say to yourself, “my vote belongs to neither the Republicans nor the Democrats. If I vote for McMullin rather than abstaining, I am not ‘helping’ either candidate win by not voting for the other one; I’m just decreasing the total vote margin going to the top two.”

Are there some situations where it’s better to vote strategically — to turn a state towards Trump because that’s the only realistic way of preventing Clinton from getting 270 electoral votes? In principle, maybe. But on the other hand, there’s a negative to that, too — given that Clinton’s chances of reaching 270 are already quite high, it might be better, in the end, in whatever small way it matters, for more votes even from battleground states to be going to a “neither of the above” candidate, so that at least in the postmortem, the true measure of his support is known.

Oh, and what about his policies?

You know, it almost doesn’t matter.

Politics

Election 2016

Evan McMullin

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