Green Party’s Jill Stein to speak in Olympia next week

Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein will be in Olympia next week making the case for why voters should pick her instead of the two major party candidates.

Stein is set to speak at The Evergreen State College beginning at 3:30 p.m. Monday at Lecture Hall 1. The event is free and open to the public.

“We’re really happy to have her and we hope that it will be a little uptick in the media and maybe perhaps in the vote locally here in Thurston county,” said Chris Stegman, an adviser for the Green Party of South Puget Sound.

Stein, whose politics are considered left of Democrat Hillary Clinton, has criticized Clinton and Republican Donald Trump during her campaign.

She calls the two-party system broken.

Stein, 66, is a doctor and political activist with little experience in elected office. She has been a town meeting member in Lexington, Massachusetts, a town with a population of about 31,000, and has lost several local races in the state.

Though Stein has virtually no shot at winning any states in the November election, including Washington, Stegman said the party hopes Stein will pull 5 percent or more of the general election vote which would qualify the party’s 2020 nominee for some federal money.

Stein is currently polling at 2.5 percent nationally according to a polling average by the online news site Real Clear Politics. An average of polls from Washington put Stein at 4.3 percent in the state.

Stegman said the Green Party is hoping to turn out millennial voters in Thurston County who might be disillusioned with Clinton and Trump. Evergreen, which has a reputation for students with far-left politics, is a perfect place for Stein to try and drum up votes and make connections, he added.

“Evergreen State College, Green Party: There’s some correlation there,” Stegman said.

This story was originally published October 19, 2016 at 6:28 PM with the headline "Green Party’s Jill Stein to speak in Olympia next week."