Jill Stein said Saturday that she played a “really critical” role in last year’s election.
The Green Party presidential nominee, who received about 1 percent of the popular vote in last year’s contest, was asked on MSNBC to explain how she perceived her role in the election.
“Really critical,” was her response. She elaborated on that point by discussing frustration with the election’s two leading candidates from the major parties, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
“I think if there’s anything to regret in this election, it’s the fact that the American people were given the two most disliked and untrusted candidates in our history. They were clamoring for more voices and more choices,” Stein said, adding that she was the leading voice for progressive platforms like a $15 minimum wage after Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders was defeated in the Democratic primary.
“I think the regret is that we had a toxic election with a toxic result,” she said.
Stein said there has been progress to some degree to alleviate this issue, pointing to Maine’s approval of a ranked-choice voting system for state and federal officials. “You can rank your choice knowing if your first choice loses, your vote is automatically reassigned to your second choice. That would eliminate the whole kind of lesser evil thing that so many people locked into,” she said.
Some critics have accused the third party candidate as playing spoiler to Clinton. Last week she was asked directly on CNN whether a dinner invitation she received to attend a 2015 event in Moscow, where she sat with Russian President Vladimir Putin and former Trump adviser Mike Flynn, was a form of meddling in the election. Stein said the recent spike in interest about a photo her sitting near Putin can be traced to Democrats “looking for someone to blame” for their election struggles.
Stein repeated that sentiment on Saturday, saying Democrats are looking for “scapegoats,” and reminded MSNBC host Alex Witt that she launched an effort pushing for recounts in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania amid concerns that voting machines were tampered with. All three of those states Trump won by a small margin and helped solidify his election victory.
