An independent ticket can win in 2024

Even as America heads toward a matchup between two of the least popular presidential candidates in American history, some have a hard time believing that an independent candidate could break through and win in 2024. It’s time to reconsider that assumption.
A once-in-a-generation opportunity exists for an extraordinary leader to rise up and guide our nation toward unity and healing. After all, this is a country that has often found those exceptional people in times of need, whether it was George Washington, Abraham Lincoln or Franklin Roosevelt.
I co-founded No Labels 14 years ago to elevate these kinds of leaders in both parties, and our 2024 efforts are the latest chapter in that work. We have a strategy to get on the majority of state ballots for an independent presidential ticket, but we are not and never will be running a campaign. Our goal is to hand our ballot lines to a worthy, courageous and electable leader who can run a campaign to unite America. If one does not emerge, we will leave our ballot line unused.
An independent winning the presidency requires four ingredients.
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The first element is for voters to have an indisputable appetite for a third choice. In poll after poll, two-thirds of Americans say they want another choice if the other options are Trump and Biden, easily the highest in modern American history.
The second element for an independent victory is ballot access, which often takes years and many millions of dollars to secure. Until recently, it was nearly impossible for anyone other than an independently wealthy, self-funding candidate to gain ballot access without a party’s support. But a little-known 2010 court ruling, Unity08 vs. Federal Election Commission, paved the way for 501(c)(4) organizations like No Labels to raise funds to conduct ballot access work under one condition: They can’t do so on behalf of a specific candidate, just like voter registration drives.
No Labels has spent two years and millions of dollars conducting just such a ballot access campaign. We’ve done so purely as an insurance policy in case neither party corrects course by nominating a candidate who appeals to the commonsense majority. So far, it appears neither will.
The third ingredient required for victory is a unifying message — one that brings together disaffected voters from both parties to create a new coalition. The message cannot be purely of the left or the right but must bring the best ideas together regardless of their origin. No Labels has begun assembling such a plan with our Common Sense policy book, which we released last summer. It provides a blueprint for where most Americans want our next president to lead us.
That leads us to this moment. Voter sentiment has left a historic opening for a third choice, and No Labels has paved a road through that opening. Now we need an exceptional leader to take that road despite its hazards and challenges.
It cannot be just anyone. It must be a strong, effective and honest leader who can capture voters’ imaginations and who has the courage to take on our broken two-party establishment. We at No Labels have been clear from the beginning that we will not introduce a spoiler into the race. We will either give our ballot line to a ticket with a clear path to victory, or we’ll step aside.
We believe this leader is out there, and we’ve already had conversations with several who could fit the bill. Our partisan critics seem to believe it as well. They know that there is a generational opening for a generational leader to shake up our dysfunctional two-party duopoly, which is why partisan political operatives in Washington, D.C., have spent months attacking No Labels and trying to deny voters a choice they so clearly want.
They distort and twist our mission for their own ends. They claim to be trying to “protect our democracy” and “save our republic” when they are, in fact, subverting our democracy at every turn and embracing increasingly brazen voter suppression tactics. They, not No Labels, are shaping up as the spoilers of the 2024 election.
I believe the stakes of finding the right leader are as high as can be. Need we be reminded that the last matchup between Donald Trump and Joe Biden almost broke us? Every headline since then suggests we are sitting atop a tinderbox yet again.
All of the ingredients exist for an independent ticket to pull off a historic upset in 2024, including the ingredient of ballot access that No Labels has fought so hard for. All we can do now is pass the torch to a leader of extraordinary potential. I believe such a leader exists, and their time is almost here.
Nancy Jacobson is chief executive and founder of No Labels.
Part of our Opinion series on The American Middle, this essay hints that an independent political organization might soon be ready to present a third party presidential candidate to voters.
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