Jill Stein. A candidate for President of US that same year. A woman who actually DID influence the votes on election day and caused Hillary to lose 3 states. Because Hillary's margin of defeat in those KEY STATES was less than the votes for the Green Party. That is by definition, having the ability to ALTER the results of an election and DIRECTLY affect the votes..
The flaw, of course, is you're assuming that every vote for Stein would have been, in her absence, a vote for Clinton. You can't make that case. It's highly plausible that absent the choice of Stein (or another Green) many if not most of those votes would not have bothered to vote at all.
The other flaw is that the Green Party regularly fields a candidate, and 2016 was no exception. And Stein I believe has run before too.
Whats the significance of "they always run a candidate"? I'm not saying that she RAN just because of coordination and support from the Russians. I'm just saying that there are TONS of more evidence that she influenced absolute votes. And yet never has her name come up in the whole damn Russian investigation.. Motive and access.
As for the silly idea that any of the Greens would have voted for Trump or Gary Johnson, even if only 80% of her votes came from Clinton -- that's STILL the margin of victory in 3 states. Remember also -- the Greens TRIPLED their net pop vote in this election...
Nah, I think you're making leaps. You can choose 100%, 80%, 20%, anything you want but it's all guesswork.
I don't see how a Hillary Clinton voter would switch to Jill Stein given the stakes -- certainly not in a close state. I've cast a 3P vote like that in the past but I first made damn sure I did it in a deep red state where my vote meant nothing except the drop-in-the-bucket protest against the Duopoly that it was.
A far stronger case can be made that Stein voters genuinely wanted Jill Stein. There would be no other reason for them to do it in a swing state --- anyone who intended an anti-Clinton vote already had Rump as a choice.
We'll never know of course but I don't think you make a strong case assuming a Stein vote is a potential Clinton vote.
Wrong. It is not arguable that the Greens tripled the amount of votes they received. That is well known, thus your claim that she had no measurable effect is ridiculous.