NORTH CAROLINA — After suspending his campaign two weeks ago and attempting to get off the ballots statewide, the state’s top court has ruled on whether Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name will make an appearance in North Carolina this November.
READ MORE: Court of Appeals halts mailing absentee ballots, orders to remove RFK Jr.’s name
In a 4-3 Supreme Court ruling late Monday evening, seven justices decided Kennedy’s name should be removed, despite the North Carolina State Board of Elections’ emergency petition to appeal. Democratic Justices Anita Earls and Allison Riggs and Republican Justice Richard Dietz dissented in the case.
Kennedy’s lawyers sent a request to the Court of Appeals last Friday after Republican Judge Rebecca Waters Holt sided with the State Board of Elections in a trial court the day before. Holt did not agree that Kennedy’s name should be removed from the ballots, as it would cost taxpayers more money to reprint 2.9 million affected ballots. However, Holt did issue a 24-hour stay for Kennedy’s team to appeal. This led to the Supreme Court taking up the case in an emergency request for ruling.
Absentee ballots were scheduled to be mailed Friday, Sept. 6, as mandated by state statute, but were halted Friday evening when the appeals court sided with Kennedy’s team and ordered the state board to begin reprinting ballots. By late Friday, the state board of elections entered its appeal to the Supreme Court, as staff also worked through the weekend to begin reconfiguring around 2,400 various ballot designs and recoding election machines as necessary in case their appeal was not favored.
The Democratic-leaning board voted 3-2, down party lines, on Aug. 29 to deny Kennedy’s name removal under We the People Party. With his name remaining on the ballot, people who chose Kennedy in North Carolina during the election would not have their votes counted.
The state board of elections cited “impracticality” as a reason to not reprint the ballots. Notably, members said it would delay the state law’s absentee ballot deadline and be perilous to meeting the federal law deadline of Sept. 21, as well as cost 100 county election boards reprinting fees — upward in the six-figure range statewide.
Kennedy’s team claimed the state was going against voter integrity, that the team followed procedure and provided a request for his name’s removal in writing, and keeping him on the ballot despite his request would be in violation of free speech laws.
The top court indicated Monday in its 46-page order, as written by Republican Justice Trey Allen, that keeping Kennedy on the ballot “could disenfranchise countless voters who mistakenly believe that plaintiff remains a candidate for office.” It added the trial court did not appropriately weigh its decision.
The price paid to reprint the ballots, the order noted, was worth voter integrity:
“To protect this important right, the elections process should ensure that voters are presented with accurate information regarding the candidates running for an elected office. Where a ballot contains misleading information or inaccurately lists the candidates, it risks interfering with the right to vote according to one’s conscience.”
The state board’s appeal included the fact that Kennedy isn’t being removed from all ballots nationwide. Kennedy, who endorsed Donald Trump in an Aug. 23 Arizona press conference, announced he and his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, would step down and request their names be removed from ballots in 10 battleground states.
“Our polling consistently showed that by staying on the ballot in the battleground states, I would likely hand the election over to the Democrats, with whom I disagree on the most existential issues,” Kennedy said from Arizona.
Yet, he added his name would remain on other states’ ballots that aren’t necessarily threatening how the presidential race will turn out this year.
North Carolina, which has traditionally leaned red, has become a swing state in 2024. Recent polling, held the first week in September, shows Harris leading Trump by 3 percentage points. Trump won the state in 2020 against Biden by 1.3%
Earls wrote in her dissent: “The rules of our elections allow such attempted gaming of the presidential election system when done far enough in advance, but it is not fair to the rest of the state to disregard election laws to accommodate late-breaking political strategy.”
She agreed his request should not outweigh state statute and when “voters across the state [are] expecting to receive their absentee ballots,” nor should it supersede the “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in expenses or the time it will take election workers to have to redo the ballots.
The Supreme Court order noted another statute in its ruling — as brought up by Republican board member Kevin Lewis during the state board of elections Aug. 29 meeting — that allows the board to make changes to the ballots if “practical.”
Lewis thought the board had the statutory authority to remove the candidate, reprint the ballots and move the deadlines for absentees to be mailed, according to 163-22(k). This gives the state board the authority to decide when to mail absentee ballots “if they are not ready by” the statutory deadline, which is 60 days before the general election.
Lewis and Republican board member Stacy “Four” Eggers also questioned the state board of elections director, Karen Brinson Bell, on why she didn’t stop the ballots from press when learning about Kennedy’s recusal from the presidential race. Instead, she told the county boards to keep printing, following his public announcement.
It wasn’t until a week later that the state board of elections voted, with Brinson Bell claiming she needed to get We the People’s Party vote on the record to remove Kennedy first, as he gained access via the party. The party voted 4-1 on Aug. 28 and the state board met the next day in an emergency meeting.
The Supreme Court noted the board was responsible “for its own predicament,” seeing as it didn’t bother “communicating or cooperating forthrightly” with the candidate, whose lawyers sent a letter by Tuesday, Aug. 27, asking for his removal.
“We are unpersuaded by the practical objections defendants raise in their submissions to this Court,” the ruling notes.
According to the NCSBE, 146,603 voters, including more than 12,900 military and overseas voters, have requested absentee ballots so far. The state board of elections director Brinson Bell noted in a noon release Tuesday that county boards have not been informed on when to begin mailing absentee ballots as reprinting begins.
In Brunswick County it impacts roughly 3,200 ballots the county had ready to mail and in New Hanover County, it’s around 3,500. Pender County didn’t know it’s number of ballots upon PCD’s request.
“We ordered 2,300 pre-printed ballots to have backstock,” Havens-Hunter wrote in an email to PCD last week. “The cost to reprint ballots is $1,131.90.”
The North Carolina State Board of Elections has ordered all printed ballots to move into storage as to not be confused with those that are newly printed and to be mailed.
“This decision imposes a tremendous hardship on our county boards, at an extremely busy time,” Brinson Bell wrote in a statement Tuesday. “But our election officials are professionals, and I have no doubt we will rise to the challenge.”
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