Professor Elaine Karmarck has this article for the Brookings Institution, on whether it is too late for an independent presidential candidate to emerge at the time of the national Republican convention. The article seems wholly accurate, yet incomplete. It does not discuss the idea that a group interested in keeping its options open could be petitioning now to qualify a new political party. In 39 states, the petition to qualify a new party need not indicate who the presidential nominee is, so that work could be going on now even before the backers have decided whether to run a candidate, or who that candidate would be.