RACINE, United States, Oct 30, 2024 (AFP) - Chester Todd is an 82-year-old running for US Congress on a platform of "equality, reparations, liberation" -- and those principles, he says, are why neither Kamala Harris nor Donald Trump have earned his vote.

Wearing a Palestinian flag-colored scarf at a coffee shop in his hometown Racine, Wisconsin, Todd told AFP he will instead vote Jill Stein, the perennial Green Party candidate who is on the ballot in nearly every battleground state this presidential cycle -- and who many Democrats fear could stymie their White House chances.

Stein has virtually no chance of winning in Wisconsin -- or anywhere -- but in the key swing state where outcomes are notoriously a photo finish, her ballot line could have outsized influence.

Republicans won Wisconsin for the first time in nearly three decades in 2016, when Hillary Clinton lost by just under 23,000 votes to Donald Trump -- a shock defeat that had some Democrats blaming Stein for taking around 31,000 votes.

And the Green Party's message -- which centers on issues like climate change, healthcare, and, this year, ending arms support to Israel in its war on Gaza -- continues to find traction in Wisconsin's bluest pockets, areas crucial to a Harris win.

National Democrats recently ran a campaign ad attacking Stein that aired in Wisconsin as well as Michigan and Pennsylvania -- all part of the so-called "Blue Wall" critical to the Democrats' White House path.

"She's not sorry she helped Trump win" in 2016, the ad states. "That's why a vote for Stein is really a vote for Trump."

Pete Karas, Wisconsin's Green Party elections chair, said that "spoiler argument" simply "doesn't hold water."

"It is an excuse the Democratic Party uses when they run crappy candidates and crappy elections and they lose."

Democratic Party strategy has included legal action to remove Stein from ballots nationwide, efforts that have mostly failed.

Karas said that picking such legal fights has done little more than further aggravate Green Party operatives like himself: "We will not be pushed out of the democratic process by the Democratic Party."

- 'Not satisfied' -
Charles Franklin, who directs the nationally recognized Marquette Law School Poll, told AFP while Stein likely does pull more from Democrats than Republicans, the idea that all Stein votes "would uniformly go to Harris" is "false."

"Any third party voter by definition has already passed the option of voting for one of the major party candidates," Franklin said. "They're voting for Stein because they're not satisfied."

A smattering of Green Party-endorsed candidates have won local office over the past decade in Wisconsin, but its presence there remains tiny.
Still, "it would be silly not to think it's a threat" in 2024, said Alexia Sabor, chair of the Dane County Democrats in the state's bluest county.

She sees the Green Party figuring into national elections as more "a desire to be disruptive" than an effort towards building a successful political party -- and says even for voters who tend Green, there's a clear choice on the ballot.

"You can not love the Democratic Party and you can not love Kamala Harris," she said, but "in terms of the values, it's pretty clear that the Republican Party doesn't align with their values -- and a lot of their values do align with Democrats."

Xavier Golden, a 23-year-old student at a public university near Milwaukee who has his own future political aspirations, says he voted for Bernie Sanders in 2020, the self-identified socialist senator who caucuses with Democrats and has run for president twice.

Speaking to AFP at the Racine Public Library where he works, Golden said this time, he's for Stein.

"If the Democrats wanted to control the main spirit of the liberal front, they would do that," Golden said, pointing to what he calls their "conservative stance on Palestine" and a tendency "to be so ticky-tacky with racial issues."

Like Green Party House of Representatives candidate Todd, Golden is a Black man. And like Todd, he says the Democrats ask for support from Black voters every four years but rarely deliver on what he dubbed "empty promises."

Both men advocate ending US arms support to Israel and call for economic reparations for descendants of enslaved people. They also point to issues like universal health care and the shortage of social and economic resources in predominantly minority neighborhoods as key influences shaping their politics.

If Democrats "were to commit to actually being the social justice party that they're painted as," Golden said, "I think they would be able to sway more voters -- and there wouldn't be no need for a Green Party."