My Journey to Endorsing Evan McMullin for the President of the United States

My Journey to  Endorsing Evan McMullin

I typically vote Republican, but never straight ticket. Most of the time when I get to the bottom of the ballot, I have voted all R's, but sometimes there is a D in there. I have never considered seriously 3rd party or independents or write-ins, until this year, where I will be voting for all of those.

This year I started endorsing Carly Fiorina for POTUS. I met her and heard her speak in June of 2015 as was impressed. I went and heard Marco and Ted and when Carly dropped out and we were primarily left with three, I supported Ted. At least I knew he had read the Constitution and would follow it.

August 1, 2016, I was looking at Castle/Bradley as there was no way I was going to support Trump, who I believe to be a Putin wannabee and a dictator in chief. I felt like Hillary Clinton was not trustworthy either and I felt like she was corrupt and would make the country and the world worse.

Because of some past statements Gary Johnson had made on religious liberty, I was not going to go see Johnson/Weld, on August 6th, but then Gary Johnson wrote his op-ed to the Des. News. It was good enough for me to decide and go meet him and Weld on two events that Saturday. One with about 30 people. Gary made 2 statements that were important. He agreed with the win/win protections for religious freedom and anti-discrimination that the Utah Legislature passed in 2015. Having voted for those two bills, that was important to me. Johnson and Weld also said they would nominate SCOTUS justices that understand and would support the original intent of the Constitution to limit government and protect our rights. Both had been state governors and had executive experience. I picked up a yard sign for Johnson/Weld, but then it stayed in my car for 2 months.

Shortly afterwards my meeting with Johnson/Weld, I heard Evan McMullin had announced his run for POTUS and then got on the ballot in Utah and 10 other states, plus as a write-in for a couple of dozen more states and counting. I spent my time researching Evan. It took me until last week to get to meet Evan, and I was impressed. His yard sign was up in my yard within days.

I could live with any of these three POTUS/VP teams, but I have endorsed Evan McMullin.

I agree with him, about 87% of the time and he could do the job and I trust him to do a great job. He understands protecting this country and limiting government and protecting our rights. I was impressed when he finally picked Mindy Finn for VP. She is only 35 years old, but is very smart, a mom with a husband and 2 kids from Texas and is very proud of her state and to be Jewish. We don't know if Evan wins if he will get Mindy as VP, as the choice may be from the top 2 from the US Senate. More information on Evan is at: https://www.evanmcmullin.com/
(Yes, that is a photo of me near the lower right hand corner with suit and the striped red tie.)

Can Evan McMullin win? Yes. Will Evan win? It depends on the voters. I challenge my friends to vote for either Castle/Bradley, Johnson/Weld, or Evan McMullin.

I would be ecstatic if no state electoral votes went to Hillary or Trump. I reject the notion that we have to chose between these two corrupt and power hungry candidates. 
Don't vote for either Hillary or Trump. 

For more info re: the Electoral College, designed to protect the smaller population states from the larger population states or cities, see:

http://fredcox4utah.blogspot.com/2016/09/so-with-potus-is-there-really-just-two.html

Pick One

During the last almost 8 years of President Obama, I have felt like he has ignored, at best, our US Constitution. I have been glad that for a few of those times, the SCOTUS told him he couldn't do something. I really don't expect anything better out of Hillary for the next 4 years, re: the Constitution. I also believe her to be totally corrupt.

While I don't agree with many things Trump has said over the last year or more, my biggest fear is that he wants to be even more of a dictator, a Putin, from going after families of terrorists to telling us only he could save us, to running with a stop-and-frisk program. He has given no indication that he has even read the US Constitution or that he would follow it if he has. 

Today, from his campaign, Trump has added Mike Lee to his list of SCOTUS nominees. I truly don't believe Trump will pick anyone that would limit his power, unless he absolutely had to, to win.

I have looked strongly at Johnson/Weld, Castle/Bradley and also McMullin. None of those have the same level of concern for me than Hillary/Trump do. For any of those others to win Utah, it appears we need some pretty strong endorsements as they appear to be splitting the #NoHillary #NoTrump vote.

Do we have anyone with the clout to move the needle in the next 2 weeks that is going to pick one of these?