Meet Jill Stein. She's unlikely to become the next president.

Yes, the Green Party has a presidential candidate. Her name is Jill Stein. The party's 2016 presidential candidate is a physician, author, environmental-health advocate, and is talking about many issues that Georgians care about: student debt, gentrification, wage decline, and the green economy.

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But her vote count in Georgia might be a big fat zero. Jill Stein's only chance at putting her name in front of voters in November is a federal lawsuit.

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Under state law, it would take more than 50,000 signatures, notarized by the page, to put the Green Party on Georgia's presidential ballot. The Green Party of Georgia argues in a suit it filed in 2012 with the Constitution Party that such a number is impossible for a small party to meet, thus infringing on the constitutional rights of a small-but-viable party to meaningfully participate in politics.

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It's up to a judge to decide if Georgia's law is unconstitutional. In the meantime, Stein is touring the country anyway. Creative Loafing recently caught up with her ahead of a reception in Downtown, one day before she was scheduled to attend the annual School of the Americas protest in Columbus.

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Given that it is such an uphill struggle for Greens to get on the ballot here, why are you stumping in Georgia? What is your message for Georgia?

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The struggle is not just for independent candidates who are not bought and paid for by corporations to get on the ballot. It's for voters to have choices. Because right now, voters are kind of constrained to this box of the conventional political parties. Democrats and Republicans that are both funded basically by predatory banks, by fossil fuel polluters, and by war profiteers. And people are being thrown under the bus and are demanding that they have a voice. Right now it's 50 percent of voters actually who have rejected the Democratic and Republican parties, so it is the largest block of voters according to the latest Wall Street Journal poll.

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And it's no wonder. People are being thrown under the bus in Georgia, like people are everywhere. Jobs that don't pay a living wage, the jobs that have come back are largely part-time and temporary. Health care costs that are skyrocketing, wages that are declining actually across America. Housing, which is being gentrified, particularly in communities like Atlanta, is really destabilizing neighborhoods and leaving people up a creek. And 40 million young people and not-so-young people who are trapped in student debt. So these are the things that we're here to offer solutions for.

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But third parties do not have a strong record of success in the U.S. Why, when you're fighting for these things, are you taking the third-party route? You could be doing a lot of things. You're a doctor. You could be having a pretty comfortable doctor job.

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I sure could, yes. But, however, I made the mistake of looking out into what was going on in the wider world laughs. In the clinic you can't avoid it ... In times of great social transition, third parties have had a profound impact on history, whether they win the White House or not.

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So you can look back to the labor movement. Where was it that Social Security and OSHA Occupational Safety and Health Administration worker protections and child labor laws and the 40-hour week came from? It was the socialist parties that fought that battle in the street and they took it into the voting booth.

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In the words of Frederick Douglass, "power concedes nothing without a demand." You have to bring that demand into the voting booth; otherwise you're sidelined. So third parties have had an enormous impact even without winning the highest offices of the land. And Greens already hold well over 100 offices from city council to school board and so on, and have made an enormous impact.

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With a name like "Green" Party, a lot of people might think that's a single-issue environmental party. What would surprise people in Georgia about the Green Party?

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That the Green Party has become the major proponent of social, economic, and racial justice in the country. The main political proponent, in that we are a national political party and we are elevating this agenda and changing policies all over the country at the local level. We are perhaps the one national party that is not poisoned by corporate money. Therefore we can actually stand up for what it is that we need. And our belief is that we're not going to solve this around the margins. We need truly transformational change. Holistic change that is as big as the crisis that's barreling down on us, which has an economic dimension, an ecological dimension, a national security dimension, and a democracy dimension.

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This Q&A has been edited for length.