The world seems more divided now than ever, and what topic is more divisive than the most recent presidential election? Last year, we saw Republican Donald Trump win the vote over Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, something that made many Thanksgiving celebrations across the nation quite awkward. However, many citizens leaning towards the left or center are pointing fingers at a possible culprit for the Democratic loss: Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party.
You may be wondering how that could be, thinking . “Trump received over 77 million votes while Harris barely passed 75 million. Stein’s measly 860,000 or so votes was not significant enough to make a difference.” And with that, you’d be right, but Dr. Stein’s impact was shockingly large.
What causes people to vote third party in the first place? More importantly, where is Jill Stein?
Before we can answer “where is Jill Stein”, we need to answer “Who is Jill Stein.” Head of the United States Green Party, Dr. Stein is a proud graduate of Harvard, something she mentions a lot. When looking at her campaign’s beliefs, it’s actually based on a lot of things I personally believe in. The Green Party’s four pillars are peace, social justice, ecology, and democracy. Basically, just being a decent person.
Recently, Stein and the party have focused on stopping the ongoing Palestinian genocide. However, she’s revealed an ugly side. Turns out, The U.S. Office of Government Ethics states she’s invested over a million in “deforestation risk agricultural commodity producers/traders.” The cherry on top? She’s invested between $250,000 and $500,000 in TC Energy Corp, owner of the XL Keystone Pipeline which she claims to oppose.
Although Stein’s heart appears to be in the right place, her wallet proves otherwise. What’s stopping her from turning her back on Gaza like she has on the environment? She’s not even backed by international green parties. During this past presidential election, Stein was asked to step down by the European Greens, citing that she was taking votes away from the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris, in a crucial election with high stakes. Basically, they asked her to withdraw for the greater good so Trump didn’t win. However, Stein did not listen.
Although Stein’s votes were not enough to have singlehandedly caused the Democrats to lose, experts at Boston University claim that her decision to stay in the race took away votes regardless and was morally questionable.
In order to get Dr Stein’s perspective, I took it upon myself to reach out to her. However, this was a fruitless effort. My first attempt took me to her campaign website, where I scrolled to the “get in touch” section to find an email of sorts. Unfortunately, she had only provided her social media accounts. That’s fine, I’ll just look it up myself. Eventually, I stumbled across her official contact page. In order to access it, it required me to make an account and expose my email, as well as a home address. All this time and effort amounted to (drumroll please) that same exact page with the social media accounts. Finally, I found an email address on a PDF containing the contact information of various candidates from the New Jersey Government’s website. I used that to send out my interview questions. Dr Stein’s answers are below:
- One of the major concerns of the Green Party is being a friend to the environment. What have you done in the past to help approach this goal? What do you plan to do in the future?
- No response.
- Another major part of your platform is stopping the genocide in Gaza. Do you plan to help raise awareness or send aid in the future? Have you already done so?
- No response.
- The European Greens have had some contention with your campaign in the past, saying you are taking away Democratic votes. What is your response? Do you feel like their claims are exaggerated?
- No response.
As you can see, this interview was quite the failure. To cut our dear Dr. Stein some slack, the email address was for her unsuccessful 2024 presidential campaign and is probably deserted by now. However, it does seem like she’s playing hard to get. I took it upon myself to check her Instagram, and to my surprise, she actually does seem to be taking some action.
She’s created the Lifeline for Palestine, an organization dedicated to helping the crisis in Gaza through contacting representatives and organizing demonstrations and boycotts, all things that have historically worked. However, who knows who she’s funding behind our backs. Considering her history with investing against her causes, the whole thing is slightly suspect. These are valiant efforts, but who knows how noble she truly is.
Stein is nowhere close to the biggest vote thief to come out of the Green Party. Ralph Nader ran for the party in 2000 presidential election with Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush. Nader managed to take away enough votes from Gore to make Florida go red, losing the Democrats 30 electoral votes. This meant it was a 271-266 Bush victory rather than a 296-241 Gore win.
While both major parties in the U.S. have major flaws, are we going to keep letting hypocritical third runners take away crucial votes? Even after Dr Stein has betrayed her causes, she still continues to have a platform. Are we seriously about to let that slide? Single-issue voting is a dangerous game that leads to serious losses. You don’t have to agree with a candidate on every single issue. However, it’s time we stop backing people who are only pretending to care.
