Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is suing the North Carolina State Election Board for refusing to remove his name from the ballot after he decided to abandon his independent presidential campaign and endorse Donald Trump.
The legal action follows a series of problems with the vote that initially hampered Kennedy’s campaign but now threaten to undermine the impact of his decision to end it.
Kennedy announced on August 23 that he was suspending his candidacy for president, saying he planned to withdraw his name from the ballot in 10 states, including key swing states where his presence would likely hurt Trump in a close race with Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee.
“Our polls have consistently shown that if I were to remain on the ballot in the swing states, I would likely hand the election to the Democrats, with whom I disagree on the most existential issues,” Kennedy told reporters when he announced his withdrawal in Phoenix, Arizona, last month.
He has since been enthusiastically embraced by Trump, who appointed him to his transition team despite concerns among conservative Republicans about Kennedy’s Democratic record and his support for abortion rights.
However, Kennedy’s request to remove his name from North Carolina — a key battleground where recent polls showed Harris with a narrow lead — was rejected by the state’s election board, which said about 1.7 million ballots had already been printed and that producing new ballots would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“It would not be practical to reprint ballots that have already been printed and meet the state law deadline for beginning mail-in voting,” the council said in an Aug. 29 statement.
Sixty-six of the state’s 100 counties have already received their mail ballots, meaning that creating batches would pose logistical challenges, officials said. “When we talk about printing a ballot, we’re not talking about … punching ‘copy’ on a Xerox machine. This is a much more complex and multi-layered process,” said Board of Elections Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell.
The board members were divided, three to two, along Democratic-Republican party lines, in denying Kennedy’s request.
A lawsuit has been filed on his behalf, claiming the decision violated his right to free speech.
“By refusing to recognize Kennedy’s legal rights and entitlements, Defendants have caused him irreparable harm,” the lawsuit alleged. “Worse, by forcing Kennedy to remain on the ballot against his will, Defendants coerce a speech that is contrary to [the US constitution].”
The dispute with North Carolina also applies to two other states considered crucial to the outcome of the Nov. 5 election.
Kennedy also was denied permission to remove his name from the ballots in Wisconsin and Michigan, where polls suggest his presence could help Harris over Trump.
In Michigan, Harris wins 0.1% with Kennedy’s name on the ballot, according to RealClearPolitics, which already gives her a 2.2% lead over Trump in recent polls. The same analysis shows her gaining 0.5% with Kennedy’s presence in Wisconsin, where she already has a one-point lead in recent polls.
Wisconsin, where Kennedy was nominated by the Natural Law Party, rejected his request to remove his name on August 27, citing election law, which states that only the death of a candidate can lead to removal after he has been nominated.
“Any person who files nomination papers and is eligible to appear on the ballot may not refuse the nomination,” the state election law states. “The name of that person must appear on the ballot, except in the case of the person’s death.”
Kennedy successfully removed himself from the ballot in several other key states, including Pennsylvania, Nevada and Arizona.
His struggle to get to the polls in some states is mirrored by his difficulty getting to the polls in other states, where his presence is unlikely to affect the outcome.
In New York, an appeals court last week upheld a judge’s decision to disqualify him from the ballot on the grounds that he lived in California and that the address he listed as his state home was that of a friend.
“This is not a situation where Kennedy improperly listed a former residence on the nominating petition, but rather Kennedy listed an address that the evidence shows he never lived at,” the panel of judges wrote.
Ironically, Georgia — another state where Kennedy’s presence could negatively impact Trump — recently ruled that he was “not qualified” to appear on the ballot because of doubts about his residency in New York. The Georgia Secretary of State’s office has said that Kennedy’s name “will not appear on the ballot in Georgia in this election.”
