Extrapolating from poll data, there is every reason to believe that some 20 million-25 million people would like to vote but are understandably aghast at the presidential tickets offered by both major parties. If those citizens don’t vote at all, or if they write in random politicians’ names or that of Mickey Mouse, their message won’t be clear and the practical effects would be extremely muted. Contrarily, if 20 million people write in the same name, several beneficial results might occur.

Admittedly, the following scenario is rather far-fetched. Yet if one thinks that either a Trump–Vance administration or a Harris-Walz one would pose a nearly existential threat to the constitutional order, a not-implausible conclusion from things I have written, then a far-fetched scenario is better than abject surrender to supposedly inevitable fate.

The main purpose wouldn’t be for a third candidate to win the election via pushing the choice to the House of Representatives. (Although that is the dream, one akin to a poker player dreaming of being dealt royal flushes four hands in a row.) Instead, the main purpose would be to lay down an unmistakable, readily measurable marker to both parties and to the media, a sign of just how many voters are fed up, not to mention up for grabs in future elections to whichever party moves away from the ideological and attitudinal extremes.

Of secondary but still considerable importance, it could help save the country from radicalism if several million people go to the polls to cast a write-in vote rather than just staying home. Why? Because numerous Senate seats hang in the balance, a few of them in races close enough that the difference could lie in how many would-be Republican voters stay home rather than take time to go to the polls.

The situation is this: By now, the remaining ranks of the won’t-vote or write-in voters are heavily skewed toward people who tend at least somewhat to the political right. Left-leaners have largely rallied around Harris, especially in comparison with Trump. Instead, the won’t-vote-for-president crowd is largely composed of those who would never vote for a far leftist such as Harris but who consider Trump too unstable to support. If they vote at all, they’ll vote Republican, including in the downballot races.

But if Trump tanks in the polls (see first paragraph above) so that Harris seems like a sure winner anyway, then a Republican Senate majority, even if it includes some discreditable people, would be all that stands between Harris and her demonstrably radical goals. Without a GOP Senate majority, Democrats would eliminate the filibuster, pack the Supreme Court, push through huge tax hikes, nationalize healthcare at exorbitant cost and significant rationing of care, and regulate intrusively and expensively into even more areas of domestic life. They also would codify extreme-left social policy, such as insisting that schools know better than parents whether children should “transition” between genders or such as mandating allowance of biological men in women’s locker rooms and athletics.

To ensure that Republicans control the Senate to block President Harris’s worst aims, there needs to be some incentive for right-leaning non-Trump voters to go to the polls in the first place. Giving them a specific write-in option might suffice.

Moreover, there is at least a chance that a well-publicized write-in effort could win a plurality in a state or two. Yes, it’s very unlikely but not impossible. The nonentity Evan McMullin won almost 22% of the vote in Utah in 2016. Utah, Maine, Alaska, and New Hampshire are states that might not be completely impossible for the right write-in to win, even now. If even one state falls to a third candidate and forces the presidential choice into the House, the “candidate” representing the aforementioned 20 million people might have some leverage to force Washington to move back to sanity or reforms.

Either way, 20 million votes would be so unusual as to command immediate attention.

How, though, would it be possible? Again, the predicate is a noticeable drop in Trump’s poll numbers, if it does indeed happen. A well-publicized write-in effort would first attract voters who abandoned Trump post-debate, along with those few million who already say nothing can possibly make them vote for either major ticket. If polls start to pick up movement — 7%, perhaps — to the new candidate while Trump stays too low to win, then the next largest disaffected voter group might start moving to the third candidate as a safe harbor. That group is composed of a whole lot of centrists or at least anti-woke semi-liberals who hold strong doubts about Harris but had been sticking with her when Trump was the alternative. If Trump doesn’t seem a threat to win, though, they could start peeling away from Harris and to the third choice, joining the “send a message” movement as the latest “in” thing to do.

It’s not impossible, not at all. In 1992, billionaire Ross Perot went from a virtual unknown nationally into a substantial polling lead in just two months. Movements that hit just the right notes can grow rapidly, taking on lives of their own.

The question then becomes who such a candidate could be. For our purposes, the chosen person need not even agree to run actively. He just needs to be identifiable as someone with the practical skill set, or executive ability or policy expertise, to serve. And it would need to be someone either seen as centrist enough to appeal to a broad middle range of the electorate or else with enough goodwill, respect for the opposition, and attitudinal (as opposed to ideological) moderation to attract people turned off by the radical Harris and the unstable, autocratic Trump.

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For one example (as a prototype, not necessarily a hard recommendation), consider Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase. He certainly wouldn’t be my first choice, philosophically, but he’s sober, serious, public spirited, managerially skilled, and broadly centrist. Twenty years ago, he was seen as somewhat liberal, by May 2012, he said he was “barely a Democrat,” in 2017 he was supportive of Republican economic initiatives, in 2020 he called for a “strong centrist, pro-business, pro-free enterprise candidate,” and last fall, he expressed at least some support for Republican Nikki Haley. To almost anyone not at the extremes of American politics, Dimon would be seen as a reassuring figure who could calm the political waters and start getting government finances under control.

Again, Dimon is just a “for instance” here. Consider this column a casting call for someone credible to enter a ring in a contest that by conventional reckoning is almost surely not winnable but that for longer-term purposes could save the republic. Until such a someone steps forward, and unless you want to write in your favorite scribe named Hillyer, then Jamie Dimon it is. Learn to spell his name, and write him in.