It was confirmed by the North Carolina Supreme Court on Monday that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name should be taken off of state ballots for the Nov. 5 presidential election.
The Court of Appeals at the intermediate level agreed with Kennedy’s request last week to stop sending ballots with his name on them. On Friday, the State Board of Elections said it would appeal that decision to the Supreme Court and asked the state’s top court to make a decision as soon as possible.
As a result, the court said Monday that the NCBOE did not meet its “heavy burden” under the standard, so “we deny their petition for discretionary review.”
The court said that all printed ballots with Kennedy’s name on them should be thrown away. They also said that the director of the Board of Elections and each county board director should have to sign off on “the destruction of these invalid ballots to maintain public confidence in the upcoming election.”
Although the first absentee ballots for the Nov. 5 election were supposed to be mailed out on Friday, they had to be put off because of the court decision so that new ballots could be made without Kennedy’s name on them.
By law, the first absentee votes had to be mailed or sent no later than 60 days before the general election. This meant that Friday was the last day to send them.
“We acknowledge that expediting the process of printing new ballots will require considerable time and effort by our election officials and significant expense to the State,” they wrote. “But that is a price the North Carolina Constitution expects us to incur to protect voters’ fundamental right to vote their conscience and have that vote count.”
The NCBOE said on Friday that workers would begin coding new ballots without Kennedy’s name over the weekend and send copies of the new ballots to county boards of elections for review.
Kennedy was running for office in North Carolina as the nominee for the We the People party. He moved to be taken off the state’s ballots after he quit his campaign and backed Donald Trump for president.
The request was turned down by the State Board of Elections’ mostly Democratic majority, who said it was too late because they were still printing votes and programming machines to count them. Kennedy then went to court.
Some justices disagreed with the majority and wrote that taking a candidate’s name off a vote is “not simple after the ballot preparation process is complete.”
Riggs went on to say, “Each ballot style has been checked to make sure it meets the legal requirements for official ballots.” There are also codes on each type of ballot to make sure that the people counting the votes read the contest and candidate on the ballot correctly.
When changes are made at the top of the ballot, it’s possible that candidates and races further down the ballot will not be coded correctly.
“Thus, once Mr. Kennedy’s name, currently in the second position on the ballot, is removed from the 2,348 different ballot styles, all contests and candidates below his name will require reproofing, re-coding, and quality control testing before reprinting.”
State lawyers have said that reprinting and putting together vote packages would probably take longer than two weeks.
Different Outcome in Michigan
Monday, the Michigan Supreme Court said that Kennedy’s name would stay on the state’s presidential ballot in November. This ended Kennedy’s efforts to have his name taken off the ticket.
The Democrat Jocelyn Benson was named Michigan’s secretary of state on August 30. Kennedy sued her to get his name taken off the ballot.
The result on Monday overturns a decision made by an intermediate-level Court of Appeals on Friday. Even though Kennedy dropped out of the race, his name will still be on the votes in the important battleground state.
The court said in a short order that Kennedy “has not shown an entitlement to this extraordinary relief, and we reverse.”
A lawyer for Kennedy, Aaron Siri, said in a written statement, “This clearly has nothing to do with ballot or election integrity.” “The aim is precisely the opposite – to have unwitting Michigan voters throw away their votes on a withdrawn candidate.”