Former Gov. Larry Hogan (R-MD) and Obama Senior Adviser David Axelrod debate whether a No Labels third-party candidate would pull votes from Joe Biden and hand Donald Trump the presidency: pic.twitter.com/sXpwlBVU5p

— The Recount (@therecount) August 21, 2023

LARRY HOGAN: Well, look, I think we’re at a point that we have never been in this country, where two-thirds of the people are not interested in voting for the Republican or Democratic nominee, the likely nominees.

And it’s — an overwhelming majority of people are completely fed up with politics. They think Washington is broken. And so, even though this normally is not something that we consider and talk about seriously, because it hasn’t happened in the past, this is something that could happen.

We have to wait and see how this campaign plays out. We’re a long way off.

HUNT: So, is this is a yes?

HOGAN: I don’t know that, at this point in time, that Trump and Biden — that Trump and Biden are going to do it.

But if Trump and Biden are the nominees, it’s very likely that No Labels will get access to the ballot and will offer an alternative. And if most of the voters don’t want A or B, we have an obligation to give them C, I mean, for the good of the country.

[By the time that was clear, it would be too late. Major parties have access to the ballot for their nominees because of their large memberships, but other candidates will have to get petitions signed and submitted for ballot access. Each state has its own deadlines for independent-campaign ballot access; in Texas, a letter of intent has to be filed by December 11th of this year, with valid petitions filed by May 2024. Most of the deadlines would be in August of next year, around the same time as the major-party nominating conventions. A handful of them require official filings of registration or petitions in June. This is not something that can be done ad hoc at the end. — Ed]