Can A Third Party Or Write-In Candidate Win?

Is it possible in today's day and age for a third party or write-in candidate to win the 2016 Presidential election? Well, we had a tornado pass close by this afternoon and I thought I might have seen a pig flying so the answer is sure, it is technically possible but practically impossible.

This is what you need to know in case you are going to get behind a candidate who is not the Republican or the Democrat offering and have actual hopes that your protest vote has any chance of producing a real outcome in the Presidential election.

The first thing to mention is that we little people of the United States when voting for President are not actually voting for the man or woman listed on the ballot. The Founding Fathers in their wisdom did not want the President to be just the person who could garner the most overall votes. They wanted as well for each state to have a certain amount of influence in the process.

Thus they created something called The Electoral College which is a group of people from each state who travel to Washington sometime after the election and who then place their vote for President. Each state has a number of electors which equals their number of congressmen and senators.

Electors are not selected by our votes. Each party submits to their state a list of people that want to represent that state in the Electoror College. Electors cannot be people who are currently serving as elected representatives at the state or federal level. Electors are free to vote their conscience but since they are always people very active in their party the results are usually as expected.

All but 2 or 3 states award all of their elector spots to the party which has received the largest vote total for their candidate for President.

So here are the hurdles for the success of a third party candidate. Almost all states have a deadline for a third party to file the proper papers to get on the state's ballot and to submit a list of electors. Often this also requires properly signed petitions of at least 1 per cent of that state's voting aged citizens. Newly created third parties for this year's election will have a real problem getting on the ballots of enough states to be able to, if they actually can get a majority of votes in those states, to end up with a majority of the overall elector votes.

Interestingly, a write-in candidate does not have to submit either signed petitions or prior to the election their list of electors. How the states will handle the submission of electors for a winning write-in candidate is up in the air but it would not be a stretch to guess that the major parties will hold up any write in successes in the courts for years. Most if not all states do require that a candidate submit their name to the state sometime prior to the election to have a vote for that name to be counted. Thus any protest only votes are never publicly counted or published.

Now practically speaking a Democrat candidate could either be hospitalized or in jail at the election and still register 40 per cent of the vote in most states. Republicans seem to have more qualms about these things but they could run a clown and he or she would still get 35/40 per cent of the Republican vote in most states. That leaves a third party or write-in candidate fighting for the 20 to 25 per cent of the voters in a state who are still willing to go out and vote. That will not be enough to get electors.

Ross Perot ran as a third party candidate some years ago, participated in the debates and gathered about 15 million votes across the country. He won 1 Elector vote, from one of the 2 or 3 states that proportion their Electors.

But, maybe some kind of tornado will rip through this country, pigs will fly and I won't tell anyone that I majored in political science.