By Martin Frost
Proponents of No Labels keep saying that a third-party candidate backed by No Labels has a path to victory in the 2024 presidential election.
That is patently false. They either don’t know or choose to ignore the history of our country because the Electoral College system is rigged against third-party candidates.
Let me be very specific. Under the Electoral College system, 48 of our 50 states award their electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis. Thus, the candidate who gets the most popular votes in each state wins ALL of each state’s electoral votes. The second-place finisher (no matter how close the vote is) in each state gets zero electoral votes. Only Nebraska and Maine have a different system for awarding electoral votes. There is no system of proportional awarding of electoral votes in the other 48 states.
How has this worked for third parties? In 1992, Ross Perot won 19 percent of the nationwide popular vote and won ZERO electoral votes because he didn’t carry a single state. A third-party candidate in 2024 probably would face a similar fate.
The only thing No Labels could accomplish in 2024 is that its candidate could win enough popular votes in some key states to tilt the statewide popular victory to one of the two major party candidates. Many observers believe that No Labels would take more votes from Biden than Trump, thus winning all the electoral votes in those states for Trump. This could also apply tto other minor candidates like Robert Kennedy Jr.
No Labels is flying under a false flag. Its candidate can’t win the national election, but it could win the election for the wannabe dictator Trump.
It shouldn’t come as any great surprise that serious politicians like Joe Manchin, Nikki Haley, and Larry Hogan have rejected the siren call of No Labels to join its ticket.
After all, no respectable officeholder wants to end a distinguished career as a punchline on Saturday Night Live.
