Sanders supporters back Jill Stein to ‘vote your conscience’

Bernie Sanders may have endorsed Hillary Clinton, praised Hillary Clinton, and urged his supporters to vote for Hillary Clinton, but it seems even the maverick Vermont senator has been unable to convince his fans, many of whom say they are planning to cast their ballot for the Green Party candidate Jill Stein on November 8th.

Support for Stein, who won 469,501 votes as the Green Party nominee in 2012, was impossible to escape at the Democratic national convention last week. Inside the Wells Fargo Center, some Sanders delegates dressed in green and wore Green Party pins.

Outside the hall, hundreds of Sanders supporters – in Philadelphia to demonstrate against Clinton's nomination – attended a Green party rally at which Stein accused the Democratic Party of derailing Sanders's campaign.

Vanessa Perez was among the protesters outside the Wells Fargo arena. Originally a Sanders supporter, she plans to vote for Stein in November and will canvass for the presumptive Green Party nominee over the next three months.

‘Rigging and fraud’

“She has a lot of stances that are very similar to Bernie’s. And I just really strongly believe that you should always vote your conscience,” Perez said. “The Democratic Party clearly doesn’t really care for the Bernie supporters and our stances, so we might as well work for a party that will.”

Perez (23) is from Florida – a crucial swing state that offers 29 electoral college votes. It is also the state where Ralph Nader, running as a Green candidate, won 97,488 votes – 2.5 per cent of the state's total – in the 2000 presidential election. George W Bush narrowly defeated Democratic candidate Al Gore – the margin is still disputed – in the state, and some believe Nader's candidacy cost Gore the election .

Perez said she was aware of that, but "can't get herself" to vote for Clinton. "I think I would regret more voting for her than I would voting for Jill and then possibly risking a Donald Trump presidency," she said. "Because it condones all of the rigging and the fraud that went on and you're letting go of the prime opportunity to push forward a third party."

The idea that the Democratic National Committee, and the Clinton campaign, "rigged" the Democratic primary is fairly widespread among Sanders supporters. For some it is a big motivator in turning their back on the party.

“My voice obviously wasn’t heard in the primaries with the election that was so clearly rigged from the start,” said Sarah Hernandez, a Sanders supporter. “So in order to make my voice heard in the election, I’ll be voting for Jill Stein.”

Hernandez (22) cited the DNC emails leaked by Wikileaks as showing "that the DNC had their finger on the scale from the start". The emails showed officials actively favouring Clinton during the presidential primary process and plotting against Sanders, and led to the resignation of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the DNC chair.

“The race was so close in so many states that that really could have changed the outcome of the election,” Hernandez said. She noted that exit poll results in some states were “way off” from the final result.

“The companies that own these voting machines,” she said, “have also donated tens of thousands to the Clinton campaign.”

No evidence

She also claimed people were paid to cheer for Clinton at the convention in Philadelphia, although the

Guardian

saw no evidence of this. The DNC has been contacted for comment.

It is not just her belief that the DNC is corrupt that has convinced her to vote Stein – who Hernandez said "has essentially the same platform as Bernie Sanders minus the corruption of Hillary Clinton and the a**holery of Donald Trump" – but also that she lives in Texas, a state Trump is likely to win.

“I’m very worried [about Trump]” she said. “Should he win, that really legitimises a lot of racists. But at the same time, being in a red state, I’m going to make my voice heard in the only way I know how.

“But I am concerned that the DNC elected Hillary in the first place. Because they [Trump and Clinton] are either tied or she’s even losing in some polls . Whereas Bernie consistently beat Trump by double digits [in hypothetical match-up polls]. We could win the House and the Senate back with those kind of numbers.”

Stein is currently polling at 2.8 per cent, according to RealClearPolitics' vote tracker. Gary Johnson, the Libertarian party nominee, appears to be the more viable third-party candidate, with 7 per cent.

But with the race between Clinton and Trump so close – polling averages show them almost neck-and-neck – some would-be Stein voters are having to be pragmatic.

–Guardian service