Hello and welcome to the political orphanage, a home for plucky misfits and problem solvers.

I'm your host, Andrew Heaton, and we are rapidly coming upon the November election.

And while some Americans are very excited to cast their vote for Donald Trump

or are very excited to cast their vote for Kamala Harris,

a significant section of voters are not thrilled with either candidate.

And so they are faced with a perennial choice.

Do they cast their vote for the lesser of two evils? Or do they opt out altogether?

And vote their conscience with the third party. We might well do an episode as we get closer

to Election Day on Strategic Voting versus Voting Your Conscience. We might even have some

Kamala and Trump proxies come on to make their pitch to independence.

But this week we're going to explore who the third party options are.

Who the third parties are, who their candidates are, what are those

options available? And we're going to kick that off with America's largest

minor party, the Libertarian Party.

At the time of recording, the Libertarian Party

is on the ballot in 45 states, which

means they have the capacity to win 465 electors well above the threshold necessary to get into the White

House. Now it's unlikely that they will win anywhere near that number, but it does mean that they have a theoretical and legal path to

victory. And by my lights, anybody who could theoretically win enough votes to take the

presidency ought to be included on the debate stage every four years.

That should be, in my mind, the threshold for whether or not you get to go on the debate stage is could you actually win the election

could you feasibly do it based on your ballot access and your organization which is

...