Robert Kennedy Jr. sued to get on the North Carolina ballot in October, and now he is suing to be removed from the ballot.
Kennedy withdrew his bid for President Aug. 23 to support Donald Trump. On Aug. 27, the We The People party requested that his name be removed from North Carolina’s fall ballot. Several other states approved the request.
The State Board of Elections held an emergency meeting Aug. 29 and rejected a request from the We The People Party to remove Kennedy’s name from the general election ballot, saying in a press release that it “would not be practical to reprint ballots that have already been printed” and meet the state law deadline to start absentee voting. The vote was directly on party lines, with three Democrats voting to reject the request, and both Republicans in favor.
Sept 6 is the deadline for absentee by mail ballots to begin being mailed, and ballots must be in their final form before that date.
Approximately two million ballots statewide have already been printed with Kennedy’s name.
The We the People Party was recognized this summer as a N.C. political party and nominated Kennedy as its presidential candidate.
“Estimates from the vendor that prints ballots for most counties were that the time it would take to prepare and print new ballots would leave most North Carolina counties without ballots until mid-September at the earliest and lead to significant additional costs,” said Patrick Gannon of the state board in a press release.
There is no deadline in state law for when a party may withdraw its presidential nominee and have their name replaced or removed from the ballot. However, under state law, absentee ballots must go out by Sept. 6 to voters who have already requested them, including military and overseas voters who may need more time to return their ballots.
Under a provision in the state Administrative Code, when a political party wishes to change its presidential nominee close to an election but before ballots go out, the State Board must determine whether it is practical to reprint ballots at that point.
As of last Thursday (Aug. 29), the State Board was aware that at least 1,730,000 ballots had already been printed. About 95 of the 100 counties have ballots approved for printing, and at least some ballots have been printed for more than 80 counties. Nearly 70 counties had their absentee ballots by Aug. 29.
The preparation of ballots includes various stages, the SBOE said.
First, once the ballot content is finalized, staff at each county board of elections and staff at the State Board work with ballot printing vendors to generate electronic proofs of the ballots. Elections staff must examine each ballot style created. A ballot style is the specific combination of contests on the ballot that correspond to a voter’s voting jurisdictions (e.g., county commissioner district, state legislative districts, congressional district, etc.). There are more than 1,000 ballot styles across the state.
Once elections staff proofread the contents of the ballot prepared by the printing vendors and approve the ballots for printing, the print vendors test the ballots to ensure they can be read by ballot tabulators.
Once the ballots pass this test, the vendors will print the physical ballots and ship them to each county board office. Staff at the county board then must package those ballots into outgoing absentee ballot envelopes, to be ready to be mailed to voters when the start of voting begins, which is Sept. 6.
“These processes take multiple weeks from start to finish,” the press release said. “If ballots were ordered reprinted, the process would essentially start again from the beginning.”
The Democrat members of the board originally rejected Kennedy’s request to be on the ballot. Observers speculated Kennedy’s popularity with moderate Democrats could draw some support away from Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden, then from Kamala Harris, who replaced Biden on the ticket.
Kennedy sued to be included on the ballot, and the courts agreed that the We The People party had met all necessary requirements to be officially recognized.
Kennedy’s withdrawal, then his endorsement of Trump led to a bump in Republican numbers. Critics have accused to Democrat members of the SBOE of attempting to water down Trump support by confusing voters with Kennedy’s name and party. We The People have not replaced Kennedy in the presidential race.
