Green Party presidential nominee Dr. Jill Stein has told RT that this year’s presidential election is about choosing between two of the most disliked and least-trusted candidates ever, while calling for a real election with more than just two candidates.
“Voters are being intimidated into voting for the candidates that are the most disliked and untrusted in our history of presidential races,” Dr. Stein told RT’s Lindsay France on The FishTank on Tuesday, just one week ahead of the presidential election.
Most Americans may not be familiar with Stein, but she is well aware that voters want to know about all of their options, not just the candidates selected by the Republican and Democratic parties.
“My hope is to help inform and empower the American people to actually make choices, informed choices about our future,” she said. “That’s what democracy is supposed to be about.”
Calling the two major parties’ choices for 2016 “a proto-fascist and corruption queen,” Stein vowed to work to disrupt the “very corrupt two-party system” after the election.
“Whether it’s Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton in the White House, we’re gonna have to fight like hell to stop the next war, to stop World War III, to stop climate catastrophe, to stop the overtake of fascism over our country,” she said. “We got a fight on our hands, and we need a political voice for that fight.”
The first step in attaining that political voice is receiving five percent of the vote on the national stage, which would propel the Green Party above much of the red tape that restricts ballot access. At present, that looks to be quite a feat, as Stein garnered just one-third of 1 percent of the 2012 vote.
As an alternative route, Stein says she will be “fighting to open up dates, establish a debate commission that represents the people, not just the two parties that have our political system by the throat” like the Commission on Presidential Debates currently run by Republican and Democratic Party members.
Stein also spoke in favor of “rank-choice voting,” also known as instant-runoff voting, whereby, in a race with more than two candidates, voters rank them all rather than simply selecting one. This system would have prevented a Trump/Clinton result, Stein says.
“Democracy is not a question of who we hate the most and who we fear the most,” she told RT, adding, “If we can’t do that, all hope is lost here.”