Yesterday, a total unknown in the political world announced an independent bid for President of the United States. Evan McMullin, is a former CIA operative, Goldman Sachs executive, and GOP policy advisor on Capitol Hill. I never heard of Mr McMullin before yesterday, but I plan on voting for him come election day. I know there will be those that will tell me “a vote for McMillan is a vote for Clinton”, so allow me to explain my reasoning.

The current landscape of this election is of such that any conservative finds his or herself constantly cringing. On the Democratic side we have Hillary Clinton, former first lady, Senator from New York, and most recently, Secretary of State for the United States. Though Hillary did have her successes as a Senator, most conservatives view her as a continuation of the Obama policies. It would not be fair to say that Obama has been a complete failure, but the decline of labor force participation as well as a moral breakdown of society have happened under his watch. The fact that Hillary was careless with classified information on her private servers, lied about it, as well as her ties to numerous foreign governments through the highly questionable Clinton Global Initiative give one pause on making her commander in chief.

On the Republican side we have Donald J. Trump, a narcissistic megalomaniac from New York City. Mr. Trump burst onto the political scene with his famous demands for President Obama’s birth certificate and college transcripts. His “birtherism” moment appears to have been the genesis for his presidential campaign, that has featured racism and bigotry. Trump's campaign started off with two promises, first to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border as well as the deportation of 11 million illegal immigrants. While attempting to justify his reasons for wanting to build the wall, Mr. Trump said that Mexico sends the rapists and murderers over the border. His second promise was a simple, total and complete(ly unconstitutional) ban of all muslims from entering the United States. On these two promises alone he should be disqualified from the presidency.

Mr. Trump regularly exhibits a complete lack of knowledge of policy and world events. Mr Trump’s convention speech was 75 minutes of repeating his beloved catch phrases “believe me”, “I alone can fix this”, and “Make America Great again”. Yet, he did not inform us as to how he will accomplish any of the things that he pledges to do as President. Last week, in an interview with George Stephanopoulos, Mr. Trump proclaimed that Russia will not be going into Ukraine, and seemed surprised when Stephanopoulos informed him that they were already there. While Mr. Trump says that he will surround himself with the best people to advise him on policy, we are seeing most top GOP advisors distance themselves from him and his campaign.

The future composition of the Supreme Court is a major issue in this election. There is currently one vacancy on the court, and there may be two more that need to be filled within the next four to eight years. While Hillary will almost surely appoint liberal judges to the court, there is no guarantee that Trump won’t. People say that Hillary will destroy the constitution with her SCOTUS picks, while Mr. Trump hasn’t been such a big believer in the first amendment either. His campaign has banned numerous news outlets from covering his events, including the Washington Post and Politico.

After the primaries the electorate is largely split into three camps, Hillary and Trump supporters as well as people who were unwilling to vote for either. Gary Johnson is too far to the left on social issues for many in the “Never Either” camp to stand behind. Even in the camps of Trump and Clinton supporters, there are many who are voting for one, simply to vote against the other. Let us also remember that less then ten percent of the country actually voted for the two nominees in the primary elections.

Although there is an established two party system in our democratic system, there is no moral or legal obligation to vote for either of the two major party nominees.

I implore you, as Ted Cruz said, to “vote your conscience”. If your conscience lies with Mr. Trump or Secretary Clinton, then so be it. Since Mr Trump is running behind in all recent polling, Mr McMullin won’t be the one that makes “The Donald” lose. Mr. Trump is taking care of it all on his own.

A friend explained to me his reasoning for wanting to vote for Trump in November, saying “we know what we are getting from Hillary, and at least with Trump there is a shot that he can be a better president than her.”

That’s the way I feel with Mr. McMullin, he is someone who is a true conservative who is not standing in line behind Trump. Neither is he like Mr. Romney or most of the Bush Family who won’t endorse Trump but are seemingly unwilling to do anything to stop him.

While we don’t know much about Mr. McMullin, we do know that he has spend much of the last 15 years in service to his country. McMullin is standing up for our country and for the conservative movement in America. Very simply he puts country over party as do I.

That alone is enough to make me #StandUpWithEvan.