Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization that covers voting access and election administration in the United States Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Election officials in the state of Wisconsin are alarmed by a request from former presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. that could potentially force them to cover up his name on millions of ballots with stickers. They warned that it would be a major hassle to get the stickers properly applied and that it could cause problems on Election Day.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission on Aug. 27 denied Kennedy’s request to remove his name from the ballot, citing a state law that says qualified candidates must appear on the ballot unless they die. But Kennedy has asked a court to order his name removed from the ballot or covered with a sticker, a task that would have to be overseen by municipal officials across the state.

The petition is now before a conservative appeals court in Waukesha and could eventually end up before the Wisconsin Supreme Court, with less than seven weeks left until the Nov. 5 election.

When Kennedy announced his withdrawal and endorsed former President Donald Trump on August 23, he said he would try to drop his name in swing states to avoid splitting the Republican vote and gaining Democratic support. He succeeded in some states and failed in others.

In Wisconsin, officials have printed hundreds of thousands of ballots with Kennedy’s name on them and have already sent many of them to absentee voters.

Kennedy is calling for stickers only for ballots that have not yet been mailed. But applying stickers could take 30 seconds per ballot, a Wisconsin Elections Commission lawyer said. That could mean tens of thousands of hours of work for local election officials across the state.

The commission’s lawyers shared the concerns of many clerks who said Kennedy’s request could lead to significant voting errors and voting machine malfunctions.

Requiring stickers would be a “logistical and administrative nightmare,” Wood County Clerk Trent Miner, a Republican, said in a court filing. He said it could increase the likelihood that a ballot counter would misread a ballot.

“With over 1,800 municipal clerks across the state, consistency in sticker placement becomes a real problem,” Miner said. “Incorrect sticker placement would cause an error and return the ballot to the voter uncounted, which in turn sows distrust in the counting and administration of the election.”

Dane County Democratic County Clerk Scott McDonell said in a court filing that the malfunctions caused by the stickers “could result in significant delays in the vote count and potentially lead to the disenfranchisement of numerous voters.”

Kennedy’s case landed in the Waukesha-based appeals court after the Wisconsin Elections Commission and a lower court denied his request to remove him from the ballot. On Thursday, the commission asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court to take the case directly. That request is still pending.

As the case continued, the appeals court on Wednesday asked representatives for Kennedy and the Election Commission: “Does it matter if ballots with stickers were not tested with voting machines?”

“No. It doesn’t matter,” Kennedy’s lawyers replied. “We should assume that this is possible.”

They added that officials were merely speculating when they said stickers would cause problems because they had not tested it.

Elena Hilby, secretary at Sun Prairie, expressed concern about the prospect of putting stickers on ballots without testing them first. “We would never send out ballots that weren’t tested, period,” Hilby told Votebeat. “Oh, my goodness, can you imagine doing a hand count that night if we find out the counters can’t read them or something?”

As for processing mixed ballots – some with stickers, some without – Hilby said, “It would scare me to have two different types of ballots in circulation and know that my machines might react differently to ballots without stickers than to ballots with stickers.”

Election Systems & Software, a major voting equipment supplier in Wisconsin, said its machines in the state have not been tested to process large volumes of ballots with stickers because federal guidelines do not require such testing.

In fact, adhesive labels are not covered by ES&S’s warranties or service plans, said Katina Granger, senior public relations manager at ES&S. Customers would have to pay for repairs to devices that malfunction due to the use of stickers, Granger said.

Printed stickers have been used in campaigns in some elections across the country in the past to prevent voters from misspelling candidates’ names, but in smaller quantities. Kennedy’s request would affect up to 4 million ballots.

Clerks did not have time to test the stickers placed on ballots, Miner, the Wood County clerk, said in a court statement.

In addition to ballot errors, he said, “stickers could fall off, get stuck or clog voting machines, which can have unintended consequences ranging from malfunctions on (election day) to expensive maintenance and repair costs later.”

“It would be enough,” he continued, “for a small part of the sticker to fall off in the scanner and then the sticker would be unusable for the entire election day.”

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at [email protected].