McMullin's 1824 strategy

"Donald Trump cannot win. So the goal must be to keep Hillary Clinton from reaching 270 electoral votes and send the election to the House of Representatives,” according to the memo titled “How Evan McMullin can win and why it’s so important,” written by chief strategist Joel Searby.
It’s an apparent acknowledgment that a traditional campaign won’t work for the independent candidate’s uphill efforts. An election hasn’t been decided by the House of Representatives since 1824.

If no presidential candidate “receives a majority of Electoral votes, the House of Representatives elects the President from the 3 Presidential candidates who received the most Electoral votes,” according to the National Archives.

If they fail to "elect a President by Inauguration Day, the Vice-President Elect serves as acting President until the deadlock is resolved in the House."

That McMullin has to finish among the top three electoral vote-getters means he’ll be on the offensive not just against Clinton and Trump but also Green Party nominee Jill Stein and Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson. The memo hits Stein for “warmed-over magical-thinking socialism and weirdness,” and slams Johnson, a former Republican governor of New Mexico, as “astonishingly weak and dangerous positions on foreign affairs and religious liberty.” yahoo