[3] After months of unsuccessful searching, Evan McMullin decided to run as a conservative alternative candidate based on Trump's divisive comments on a variety of issues, calling him a potential threat to the Republic.

[4] On August 10, 2016, Evan McMullin, the former chief policy director for the House Republican Conference and a former CIA operations officer, announced that he would run for the presidency of the United States as an independent.

[8][9] On October 6, McMullin selected Mindy Finn, who had supported Marco Rubio during the Republican presidential primaries, to serve as his vice-presidential running mate.

In that event, the United States House of Representatives would meet to elect the President, and would be bound to choose from the top three presidential candidates in terms of electoral votes.

Although Trump ultimately won a majority in the Electoral College, had Clinton flipped his two most marginal states of Michigan and Pennsylvania, then a McMullin victory in Utah would have delivered this outcome.

[29] Ballot access: a combined total of 84 electoral votes in these states: Arkansas,[30] Colorado,[31] Idaho,[32] Iowa,[33] Kentucky,[34] Louisiana,[35] Minnesota,[36] New Mexico,[37] South Carolina,[38] Utah,[39] Virginia[40] Write-in: a combined total of 366 electoral votes in these states: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Washington, Washington, D.C., West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming[41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49] McMullin received no votes from the Electoral College.

[51] He broke write-in vote records in Arizona, Delaware, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin.