Carl Zeitz, a Democrat, is a retired former journalist, public official and public relations consultant in New Jersey.

Coming off a big win in Tuesday’s primaries (though Ohio eluded him) Donald Trump is one step closer to clinching the Republican nomination, and plenty of GOP figures are horrified. On Thursday, national conservative leaders are meeting in Washington, D.C. to plot a third-party run against the front-runner—just so there will be a “true conservative” in the race. Others have discussed the possibility of launching an independent bid. In a comment late Tuesday night, Chris Matthews, one among many talking about the possibility, speculated whether Republicans could stop Trump by organizing a third party.

There’s just one problem: At this point in the race, it would be very hard, if not nearly impossible, to qualify a third party or independent candidate in enough states to come close to winning 270 electoral votes. This is not 1912, when Teddy Roosevelt literally left the GOP convention to foment the Bull Moose Party. Since then, the major parties have created regulations to make it harder for third party or independent candidates to launch credible bids for president. This year, there are many in the GOP who probably wish they hadn’t made it so hard.


First, let’s tackle the issue of launching a third-party run: Starting the party is the easy part. Anyone can form a new political party anytime he or she wants. But even after time has been spent coming up with and agreeing on party rules and bylaws (for instance, how are they going to pick their candidate?) and party structures, there’s the matter of getting the word out, getting registered in enough states and getting a candidate’s name on the ballot.

The laws and regulations that govern how parties and their candidates qualify for the ballot are made by the states and differ from state to state. But nowhere is it a simple process. In Florida, for instance, a key toss-up state, a newly formed party must submit a certificate showing its name, the names and addresses of party officers, including members of its executive committee. This must be accompanied by a completed statewide voter registration form for each of its officers and executive committee members, and the new party must provide a copy of its constitution, bylaws and rules and regulations to the Florida Division of Elections in the Department of State.

Then, to get on the November presidential ballot in Florida, a third-party candidate has to file petitions by July 15 with 119,316 valid signatures. (As a rule in signature gathering, it’s necessary to get two or even three times the required number to protect against validity challenges over details like wrong addresses, misspelled names or nonregistered voter names. That takes thousands of people gathering signatures—and a lot of money to pay them and to pay attorneys to run the process and defend against challenges.) A new party would have to act with unprecedented speed in order to register a candidate in enough states to pose a credible challenge.

So if it’s too late to start a new party at this point, what about taking advantage of an existing party? Could anti-Trump conservatives launch a third-party bid from within a party that’s already gone through the work of establishing itself in many states?

It takes 270 electoral votes to win the presidency. As of February, only two minor parties had registered in enough states to have access to that many electoral votes. The Green Party by then had access to 296, but that party is hardly likely to embrace a Republican. The Libertarian Party had access to 325 electoral votes. Libertarians share some beliefs with conservatives, but it’s hard to imagine they would let an establishment conservative run with their party’s backing. There’s also the matter of state law: The Libertarian primary is already underway, and many states have laws that prevent a party from switching candidates after it has already picked one.

With third-party routes shutting down, another option would be to run an anti-Trump conservative as an independent. Again, this is in the hands of state law. Each state has different requirements for the number of valid signatures needed, ranging from a low of 275 in Tennessee to a high of 178,039 in California. And each state sets its own deadline for filing independent petitions. All such state deadlines will arrive between now and the end of August.

Let’s take Texas, the biggest red state, as an example. No Republican, no conservative can win the presidency without Texas’ 38 electoral votes. So, what does it take to get an independent presidential candidate on the Texas ballot? Petitions have to be filed there by May 9, complete with valid signatures of nearly 80,000 voters who did not vote in the March 1 Texas primaries. Gathering this many signatures might seem easy; it’s not. It will take a lot of money, a great deal of organization and literally thousands of people to deploy in shopping malls and supermarkets (and any place they might find registered voters who didn’t vote in the primary willing to sign a petition) to pull this off before the deadline. Could the Republican Legislature change the law to extend the deadline? It’s possible, but the Texas Legislature doesn’t meet in even numbered years, so it is not scheduled to meet in 2016. Only the governor of Texas can call a special session and only to deal with a specific, publicly announced agenda.

Could petition deadlines be extended in other states? It’s possible, but while Republicans have full legislative control in 31 states, sessions in most of those will be over before conservatives can even organize a lobbying campaign to change ballot access laws. In 11 states, sessions conclude on or before April 1, including seriously red states like Georgia, Indiana, South Dakota, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.

Of course, it’s possible that the goal of launching a third party or independent candidacy isn’t to win the presidency. If the purpose of a third, conservative candidate is simply to stop Trump from being elected—even if it means helping their arch foe Hillary Clinton—the 1992 Ross Perot independent candidacy shows that is indeed possible. (Perot’s candidacy ensured the election of Bill Clinton in 1992 in their three-way contest with President George H.W. Bush.)

But if the purpose is to win states and electoral votes, then the Perot candidacy shows an independent bid, even when the candidate makes it on to every state's ballot, is very likely to fail. In 1992, Bill Clinton got 43 percent of the popular vote; George H.W. Bush got 37 percent; and Perot got 19 percent. Clinton won 370 electoral votes, Bush 168 and Perot none.

It’s also possible that the move to a third party or independent candidacy may have less to do with stopping Trump and more to do with protecting turnout in down-ballot races for the U.S. Senate, the House of Representative, governors’ offices and state legislatures. If anti-Trump GOP-ers and independents stay home on Election Day, then other Republican candidates will suffer. Running a non-Trump conservative would be a way of getting as many conservative voters to the polls as possible.

But even if a major third-party or independent candidacy could be organized and ballot-qualified now, this effort would take a strong, richly funded, consummately organized, focused campaign to educate voters to get them out to vote, telling them to choose the new candidate in Column C and then move back to Column A to elect other Republicans. It’s just very hard to imagine anyone could pull it off at this point.

As far as I see it, unless conservative election law experts have some secret ballot access plan that lets them avoid changing state rules and regulations, it appears anti-Trump conservatives face a touch choice: Accept Trump as the nominee; put up a meager third-party or independent bid that would enrage Trump’s already enraged supporters; or make every effort to stop Trump at the convention, which would also enrage Trump’s constituency. In other words, the party can choose Trump, or risk fracturing completely.