The Good, The Bad, The Unqualified: Jill Stein 1/2

This November, the United States will holds its general presidential election, where registered voters will choose the next president, and fill many other political offices. While there are a few third party candidates running for the highest office in the land, they won’t win. The president is not a popularly elected position, and they are not that popular.

Love or hate the electoral college, it is the means by which United States presidents are lawfully chosen. 538 electoral votes are distributed across the fifty states and the nation’s capitol. Each state and the District of Columbia has a minimum of three votes, but more populous states carry more.

In order to win the presidency, a candidate must win at least 270 electoral votes, just over half. Democratic party candidates usually take a few high electoral vote states like New York and California. Republican candidates usually sweep up several low vote states like Wyoming, Alaska, and South Dakota. “Swing states” can go either way and usually dictate the course of the country.

Only Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump can secure the 270 minimum votes to win. All states except Nebraska and Maine have “winner take all” electoral votes; whichever candidate gets the most popular votes in Florida will take all of that state’s 29 electoral votes (as you may remember from 2000). This means that in order for Jill Stein to win, she would need to outperform Clinton and Trump in a majority of states, or in the biggest states and several others.

Jill Stein has a zero percent chance of getting a single electoral vote outside of Nebraska and Maine, and she’s nothing close to a favorite in either. In fact, she’s not even on the ballot in Nebraska and twenty-six other states. Of particular concern is the matter that the states that have her on the ballot are largely Democratic party strongholds, not Republican reliable states. Stein can take votes away from Clinton but not from Trump.

While Clinton and Trump are competing to win just over half of 538 possible votes, Stein would need to win 83% of the 324 she can even run for; she’s not even a candidate in more than half the country. Based on her highest national poll figures peaking at 5%, and her own history of endless electoral failure, there is absolutely no way Jill Stein will be our next president. She cannot win. What she can do is fuck it up for the rest of us.

Read part 2