On August 22, Better for America issued a press release, saying its opportunity to influence the presidential election as diminished, and therefore it will end its candidate recruitment and ballot access efforts. It only circulated two petitions for party status, in Arkansas and New Mexico.
Although it is believed that Better for America supports Evan McMullin for president, so far there is no official link between Better for America and the McMullin campaign. This press release does not mean that McMullin isn’t continuing to petition. The Better for America press release says it will continue to pursue constitutional litigation against bad ballot access laws. So far its only lawsuit is in New Mexico, over whether its party petition had enough valid signatures.
They should have begun their petition drive as soon as Cruz left the race following the Indiana primary. That leaves only the Constitution Party for a conservative protest.
Weird. I just heard that Better For America / Evan McMillan for President just hit the streets as a paid petition in Virginia today. Sounds insane, but a paid petition circulator I know is working in Virginia right now, and he told me it hit the streets this morning.
Andy, that is weird. Unless your friend is part of a large army of petitioners, they are WAY too late for Virginia (which is not an easy petitioning state).
I did a poll for one of the campaigns, and I got over 1,300 responses. McMullin got about 2.8% of the vote nationally. However, if you adjust the results to count votes from the states where he is on the ballot, he ends up getting only 0.2%. Rocky De La Fuente got less than half the raw votes that McMullin has, but does way better because he is on more state ballots.
Kevin, did your poll happen to include Jill Stein? I’m curious as to her percentage if it did.
I imagine there is some regulation that gives McCullin a fund raising advantage?
B4A or independent, to get more money for ballot access and media buys the wholevthing should have got going several months ago, when the fear of Trump was higher, and Trump was still statistically in the running for POTUS. imo.
McMullin missed TN too
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/evan-mcmullin-no-tennessee-ballot-227277
Joshua, it was an 8-candidate poll. The poll is almost finished, but not yet. Currently, Jill Stein sits at 5.5%. SHe is almost entirely getting support from white voters.
BFA is an obvious front group for the country club suburban Elephant gangsters — who were/are very UN-happy with Trump.
See the wiki —
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_for_America
Another factor in Tennessee may have been the fact it’s the home state for Darrell Castle, the nominee of the Constitution Party. If want a conservative against Trump, they would go for Castle.
Castle is pro-drug, pro-prostitution, and an extreme isolationist. Johnson is more conservative than Castle
I wonder if this means they won’t be giving McMullin the two states they already have.
Brandon L….What in the heck are you talking about?? Castle is for drug decriminalization (so is Johnson). I have no idea where you got he is pro prostitution(whatever that means) please cite? Castle is for open fair trade, not trade agreements which compromise our sovereignty.. Stop spreading lies. I voted for Johnson last time, but he is no conservative..
Evan McMullin not making the ballot in Tennessee had absolutely nothing to do with Darrell Castle.
“I wonder if this means they won’t be giving McMullin the two states they already have.” — Andy Craig
McMullin only needs to win one state to end up with more electoral votes in the Electoral College than the faux Libertarians — Gary Johnson and William Weld — who have been paying you to troll the Internet lo these past several months.
Funny, I see more anti-GJ trolls online then Pro-GJ ones.
I really do not see how a no-name candidate who jumped in the race late could hope to even win one state. Even if “they” rigged the vote for him in one state, the vote rigging in favor of him would be too obvious, so I can’t see them getting away with that.
Andy – The McMullen campaign is all about Utah and Mormons. Everything else is just noise. With heavy LDS support, McMulllin might win Utah, or at least throw it to Clinton.
@Don Wills: Or keep it out of the Libertarian column, perhaps. At least, I’ve seen it suggested elsewhere that McMullin is really not a NeverTrump campaign, but rather a deniably-plausible way to blunt the edge of the Johnson-Weld campaign, particularly in Utah and New Mexico.
@John Anthony —
That’s my biggest problem with McMullin.
About 4-5 weeks ago, after the Republican convention, Trump got a bounce. His bounce at the time was big enough to show him flipping these Obama 2012 states: Ohio, Florida, NH, Iowa, and Nevada. They also had Trump at that time ahead in ME-2. If that were the map on election day, the EC would be Trump 270, Clinton 268, and barring a faithless Trump elector, Trump would be president.
Trump has since faded, but what if Clinton fades and it gets close again, so that map could resurrect itself? And what if both major parties continue to be viewed as they are, which is not good, so that the most that Trump and Clinton could get is a combined 80% of the vote, with the other 20% going to third parties?
Now assume that we have such a result, but with national poll numbers about what they are, but with McMullin running a one state (Utah) campaign. He carries Utah with a plurality, but that map remains otherwise as 538 had it. The EC count would be Clinton 268, Trump 264, McMullin 6. That throws the election to the House, and the House can only consider Trump, Clinton, and McMullin.
The problem is what the popular vote would look like. If we have about 130 million votes cast in this election (about the number we had in 2012), we might see that Trump/Clinton would about evenly split 104 million votes (80% of 130 million). The remaining 26 million votes might be split as follows: Johnson @14% with 18.2 million votes, Stein @5% with 6.5 million votes. At 18.2 million, Johnson is close to 1992 Perot territory. The remaining 1.3 million votes would be split among candidates like Castle, McMullin and De La Fuenta. In this scenario, Johnson and Stein are shut out of the electoral college in favor of a candidate who likely gets less than 1 million total votes, and about 1/2 of one percent of all votes cast. This possibility, which is what McMullin seems to be hoping for, is the biggest problem I have with his candidacy.
Any winner other than Trump and Clinton will be accepted by me regardless of how many EC he/she gets. Period.