The North Carolina Supreme Court on Monday ruled to remove former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from the state’s ballot ahead of the general election.
The 4-3 ruling upholds an appeals court ruling on Friday that Kennedy’s name should be removed from the ballot. A lower court had previously rejected Kennedy’s request to remove it. The ruling also means that the ballots must be reprinted.
“We recognize that expediting the process of printing new ballots will impose significant time and effort on our election officials and significant expense on the state,” Justice Trey Allen wrote in Monday’s majority opinion. “But that is a price the North Carolina Constitution requires us to pay to protect voters’ fundamental right to vote according to their conscience and to have that vote count.”
Judges Anita Earls, Richard Dietz and Allison Riggs dissented.
A lawyer for Kennedy did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday evening.
The decision is a victory for Kennedy, who previously suffered a setback when the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that he must remain on the swing state’s ballot after he dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed former President Donald Trump. Kennedy, who previously fought to get his name on as many ballots as possible, has been trying to have his name removed as polls suggest that remaining on the ballot could hurt Trump’s chances in November.
NBC News reported that the legal dispute over Kennedy’s inclusion on the North Carolina ballot affected the timing of ballot mailings after the state’s election board instructed officials not to begin mailing ballots on September 6 as originally planned.
When we asked a spokesperson for the North Carolina State Board of Elections for comment on a new voting schedule, he referred NBC News to an email sent to 100 county election boards following Monday night’s decision.
Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the state Board of Elections, urged election officials in the email “not to mail ballots until a date is set when all counties can do so.”
She also noted that the committee had begun “discussions” with the Defense Department about a possible exception to the Sept. 21 deadline if reprints were not ready in all counties within the 45-day deadline required by federal law for military and overseas ballots.
Brinson Bell added that 27 counties had already begun printing ballots when Kennedy announced his withdrawal from the presidential race on August 23, and that by the time his campaign contacted the committee on August 26 with notice of the withdrawal process, more than half of the state’s counties had already begun printing ballots.
Monday’s ruling invoked the Free Elections Clause of the state constitution, which protects the right to vote and the accurate counting of votes, and rejected an attempt to block enforcement of the appeals court’s order to remove Kennedy from the ballot. The majority argued that allowing Kennedy’s name “to appear on the ballot could incapacitate countless voters who falsely believe that plaintiff is still a candidate for office.”
A spokesman for the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday evening.
