Why do you think so many people hold onto this belief that you caused Clinton's loss?

"Blaming Greens is an effort to maintain [a] stranglehold on progressive voters. The issue here is much larger than what happened in this race. People who are saying we shouldn’t have run, so Hillary could have done better, are saying that we should only have two official parties. So we would be like Iran or something, where you only have state-sanctioned parties? And that would help us? Probably not.

"The solution to a compromised democracy on life support is not to suppress opposition voices. Democracy relies on vigorous opposition and vigorous debate. Instead, what you want to do is just change the voting system so that it doesn't constrain people by making them terrified of actually bringing their value to the vote. Should we be voting by deciding whom we hate the most? That does not a democracy make.

"A democracy should reflect our values, and we need a voting system that allows us to bring our moral compass to the polls. That means ranked choice voting, open debates, so voters can be informed and empowered and end voter ID laws."

Besides donating to this recount, how else can an everyday citizen fight against voter suppression?

"This is a movement for election justice and election integrity, and that movement has only just begun. The movement is very big and has many different pieces. I think it's very important for these pieces to come together, because divided we’re conquered, where united we’re powerful and can’t be stopped.

"There are many pathways to ending voter suppression, including fighting against voter ID laws, felon disenfranchisement and this Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program, which purges people from the voter rolls. You can also fight for automatic registration and early voting and for adequate election infrastructure and polling sites.

"We need to come together to get money out of politics. We need to end fear-based voting, which constrains our vote. We need a clear constitutional right to vote and defence of that right, but we also have to assert our right to be informed who our choices actually are.

"Being forced to vote for the lesser evil doesn’t deliver what people want. Eventually, people vote against the lesser evil, which appears to have been a big dynamic in this 2016 election. So many working people felt they had been betrayed by lesser-evil Democrats, so they decided they were going to just throw their vote to Donald Trump, even though that was a pretty crazy thing to do, too. If they had known there was a third-party candidate who actually represented their values — and if they had a voting system that didn't make them terrified of voting their values — we could have seen a completely different universe come from this election."

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.