Presidential candidate Jill Stein to speak at Maine Green Independent Party convention

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein speaks in Dearborn Heights, Michigan on March 7, 2024. (Ken Coleman, Michigan Advance)

As the 2024 election cycle gets underway, presidential candidate Jill Stein will headline the Maine Green Independent Party convention in Augusta this weekend and will also hold a town hall in Portland.

Stein, a doctor, ran for president as a member of the Green Party in 2012 and 2016, finishing a distant fourth in both elections. She is once again seeking the left-wing party’s nomination for president and already has a big lead in the group’s primary process.

According to her website, Stein is running on a platform of implementing an economic bill of rights that guarantees a living wage job along with housing, food, health care and education; a Green New Deal to tackle the climate crisis while creating new jobs; justice for marginalized communities; a foreign policy based around diplomacy and a stop to endless wars; and creating real choices in elections that have historically been dominated by the two major parties.

Stein is scheduled to speak at the Maine Green Independent Party convention on May 5 at noon at the Viles Arboretum in Augusta. It marks the first in-person convention since the COVID-19 pandemic for the Maine Green Independent Party , which boasts roughly 37,000 registered members . The convention will be held from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Attendees are encouraged to register ahead of time at the Maine Green Independent Party website.

Along with speaking at the convention, Stein will also hold a town hall at the Portland Media Center on May 4 from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. The event will be broadcast on Portland’s cable Channel 5 .

Stein’s scheduled appearances in Maine come after she was recently arrested at a protest of Israel’s war in Gaza at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Amid Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, the Green Party candidate has accused both the Democratic and Republican parties of backing genocide in the Palestinian territory.

Stein’s visit to Maine also comes as the U.S. heads into a 2024 election in which many voters are dissatisfied with the two major party candidates, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. Some Democrats have partially blamed Stein for the outcome of the 2016 contest, when Trump was elected, arguing that she spoiled the race by garnering votes in key swing states that might have otherwise gone to Hillary Clinton — a claim that Stein has disputed .

In Maine, the so-called spoiler effect is mitigated by the state’s practice of using ranked-choice voting in presidential elections. Under that structure , voters have the opportunity to rank candidates in order of preference. In a race with three or more candidates, if no person wins a majority, the last place candidate is eliminated and people who picked that candidate have their votes redistributed to the candidate they listed second. That process continues until a candidate wins a majority.

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