TAMPA — Upon taking the stage in Ybor City on Wednesday night, an illuminated Jill Stein looked out on the crowd in the dark and smiled.

"This is what democracy looks like," she said to cheers from the roughly 200 people inside the historic Cuban Club theater. "Not that thing we saw the other night they call a debate."

Stein, who is running for president under the Green Party banner, cast herself as the alternative to the two unpopular candidates from the Democratic and Republican parties, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

"They have not earned our votes," she said to reporters before the event. "It is a race to the bottom between the greater and the lesser evil.

"This is a perfect storm for a voter revolt," she said.

Those who packed into the auditorium came to hear a vision of change. Nataliya Ivanova, a Bulgarian immigrant who became a citizen in March and will vote in her first election in November, said Clinton would simply be more of the same.

"I want to vote for something I believe in," said Ivanova, 26, a former Bernie Sanders supporter.

Stein held Sanders close during her speech Wednesday night. Her No. 1 priority if elected, she said, is eliminating student debt, an idea Sanders popularized in his race against Clinton for the Democratic nomination. Like Sanders, Stein's platform largely targets disenchanted millennials.

"The first step is to bail out a generation of young people who are held hostage by student debt," she told reporters.

Young people, she said, have always paved the way for change.

"In order to accomplish the rest of our agenda, it's really important to liberate the ground troops for social change."

A Real Clear Politics average of recent polls put Stein at 2.4 percent, far behind both major party nominees and five points behind Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson. She wasn't letting that tamp down her expectations for election night.

"I think it's too soon to say," she said.

Even though the election between Clinton and Trump is nearly a dead heat and though most Stein supporters lean left of center, Ivanova rejected the idea that her vote for Stein could mean a vote for Trump.

"I'm not willing to vote for Hillary just because I'm against Trump," she said.

Contact Josh Solomon at (813) 909-4613 or jsolomon@tampabay.com. Follow @josh_solomon15.