A 35-year-old Texas man legally modified his identify to “Actually Anyone Else” and introduced he’s working within the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
The person, previously generally known as Dustin Ebey, is a military veteran and teaches seventh grade math at Watauga Center Faculty, positioned in Tarrant County, Texas. However this week, he determined to offer the world a historical past lesson and introduced his run for presidential candidacy—which, traditionally talking, is a doomed mission—out of frustration over the 2 repeating candidates, former president Donald Trump and present President Joe Biden.
The identify change concept began as a joke final 12 months, Else stated in an interview with Texas outlet WFAA. He began taking it critically as a result of he realized there’s few different choices “for people like me who’re simply so fed up with this fixed energy seize between two events that simply has no profit to the frequent particular person.”
Else legally modified his identify at a courthouse in Tarrant County on January 12, and it’s even mirrored on his driver’s license. However he’ll want 113,000 signatures from non-primary voters in Texas to make it on the presidential poll. Because it’s unlikely he’ll obtain sufficient signatures, per a Guardian report, he’s campaigning for individuals to put in writing in his identify.
Being on the poll isn’t about himself as an individual, he stated within the interview, “it’s about actually anybody else as an concept.”
Else believes there must be an choice past the 2 candidates—one a billionaire and the opposite a lifelong politician—as a result of they don’t share the identical experiences as the vast majority of the nation. He questions whether or not Trump and Biden are “nonetheless in contact with individuals like me or individuals such as you.”
What’s extra, Else stated lots of people he speaks to vote “towards one of many principal candidates relatively than for somebody they assist.” They may not like Biden, he defined, however they’ll vote for him in the event that they despise Trump. He hopes that getting his identify on the poll could be a method for “disenfranchised” individuals who need one other presidential choice to say “neither.”
“We must always have the choice to vote for individuals who symbolize us,” Else stated, relatively than voting for the “lesser of two evils.”
Can third-party candidates really win an election?
The sentiment behind Else’s presidential bid will not be misplaced on many individuals. Style for a 3rd get together candidate has been rising. Certainly, 63% of U.S adults agree that the republican and democratic events do “such a poor job of representing the American individuals {that a} third main get together is required,” in response to a survey performed by Gallup in October.
The nation is residence to greater than 54 political events–among the most energetic embrace The Inexperienced Occasion, Reform Occasion, Libertarians, and Pure Legislation Occasion–and 37 of them have had candidates run for the U.S. presidency. However traditionally, third get together candidates are inclined to lose due to how the nation’s two-party system advanced, in response to a report by Third Approach, a public coverage suppose tank based mostly in Washington D.C.
Some influential third-party candidates who’ve run embrace Ross Perot, who ran as an impartial in 1992, and Ralph Nader, who made 4 presidential bids beneath the Inexperienced Occasion in 1996 and 2000; the Reform Occasion in 2004; and as an impartial in 2008. They had been all unsuccessful runs.
On March 8, No Labels, a bunch that helps third-party presidential candidates, determined to discipline a presidential candidate within the 2024 election,The Related Press reported, however its luck has been dry. Earlier this week, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie determined towards a third-party run with No Labels, becoming a member of a listing of different big-name candidates, together with Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin who refused to hitch the centrist get together.
Whereas Christie stated he appreciates “the encouragement I’ve gotten to pursue a 3rd get together candidacy,” and feels as if it’s an essential dialog available, he thinks it may harm the general election end result. “If my candidacy in any method, form or kind would assist Donald Trump turn out to be president once more, then it isn’t the best way ahead,” he wrote in a assertion on X.
And the Third Approach report additionally goes to point out how third-party runs can have an effect on election outcomes.
It’s “near not possible for a third-party candidate to really win the election outright,” and candidates typically as an alternative “act as a spoiler,” the report says.
Nonetheless, desires of a extra relatable third-party are in movement in a lot of the nation–as seen by Else’s name-altering determination to deal with the two-party dominated poll. And he hopes his identify on the poll will likely be a “beacon for everybody who shares the identical sentiment.”
