Monthly Supplement | With a boot on his head and a giant toothbrush in his hand – these are the “triple candidates” of the US presidential elections

Donald Trump or Terrible Harris? Republican or Democrat?

The US presidential election is a trade of two. It is due to the indirect electoral system where the electors choose the president.

The candidate with the most votes in the state gets all the electors in the state. (However, in two small states, i.e. Maine and Nebraska, the votes may be split between several candidates.)

Despite the electoral system, there are usually a lot of candidates from minor parties and independent entrepreneurs. Some of the filler candidates are to be taken more seriously, while others are “trollers” or pranksters who mainly seek publicity for themselves or their cause.

Candidates from minor parties may gain more support in opinion polls beforehand than in the actual elections.

In recent decades, the most visible “three candidates” in the presidential elections have been, for example, a billionaire Ross Perot (1992 and 1996) of the greens Ralph Nader (2000), of the Reform Party Pat Buchanan (2000), of libertarians Gary Johnson (2016) and the Greens Jill Stein (2016), which is again nominated.

This time, opinion polls were confused in advance by a member of the powerful Kennedy family Robert F. Kennedywho however gave up his candidacy in August.

There are twenty or so candidates left. The monthly supplement introduces a few of them.

Vermin Supreme

The bushy-bearded performance artist often wears a boot as his headdress and carries a giant toothbrush. If Supreme is elected, he promises every American a pony and investments in time travel. Supreme’s energy policy is based on the utilization of zombies in the circular economy.

Claudia De la Cruz

Behind the New York activist is a party that supports revolutionary socialism and Marxism-Leninism. De la Cruz has studied criminal psychology. According to the New York Times, De la Cruz has received support from a businessman with strong ties to the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda machine.

Randall Terry

The bigoted abortion opponent ran for the Democratic nomination in the 2012 election. Terry tried to buy an ad for the previous year’s Super Bowl broadcast that would have shown pictures of aborted fetuses. The ad was not shown. At one election event, another alternative candidate, Vermin Supreme, sprinkled glitter on Terry and said he would turn him gay.

Cornel West

Among the colorful fringe candidates, there are also candidates to be taken more seriously, such as Cornel West, who studied at Harvard and did his dissertation at Princeton. He is a well-known intellectual and activist who has written about issues such as race and class struggle. West has also starred in two Matrix films.

Shiva Ayyadurai

Born in India, Ayyadurai has completed his PhD in biotechnology at the elite MIT university. Today, Ayyadurai is an activist specializing in conspiracy theories and anti-vaccination. He has claimed to have invented email.

Jill Stein

Jill Stein was already a candidate of the Greens in the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections. Stein runs the Green New Deal program, or green redistribution, whose name refers to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s famous New Deal program. In the green redistribution, the state would heavily invest in an environmentally friendly economy and slowing down climate change.

Chase Oliver

The Libertarian Party candidate has previously run for the Senate. In Oliver’s opinion, the United States should end military support for Israel and Ukraine and withdraw from all its bases abroad. Oliver is openly homosexual. He supports broad gun rights. “Armed gays are harder to oppress and harder to abuse,” Oliver has said.

Krist Novoselic

Perhaps the most famous of the marginal candidates is the musician known as the bassist and co-founder of the band Nirvana. Novoselic became interested in politics already in the 1990s. He originally supported the Democrats, but has since changed his positions on many issues. What is your political line, he was asked in a TV interview. “I’m anarcho-capitalist, socialist, moderate… I don’t know,” Novoselić replied.