Key Swing State Rejects Request to Remove RFK Jr. From Ballot

Officials in the key swing state of North Carolina rejected a request to have Robert F. Kennedy Jr. removed from presidential ballots in the state.

“The State Board of Elections on Thursday rejected a request from the We The People Party to remove its nominee, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., from the general election ballot, because it would not be practical to reprint ballots that have already been printed and meet the state law deadline to start absentee voting,” the North Carolina Board of Elections wrote in a press release on Thursday.

The press release said that the We The People Party previously sent a request to the state’s board of elections to have Kennedy removed as he recently suspended his presidential campaign.

“The State Board scheduled an emergency meeting for Thursday to consider the request. A majority of the Board determined it was too late in the process to change course and prepare and print new ballots across the state,” the press release said.

The statement added, “Estimates from the vendor that prints ballots for most NC 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.”

On August 23, Kennedy, a lifelong Democrat who ran as an independent for much of his 2024 campaign, announced he was suspending his presidential bid and instead endorsing Republican presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump. Meanwhile, there is growing speculation that Kennedy will be offered some sort of role in Trump’s administration in exchange for his support.

Kennedy has started pulling his name from ballots in key battleground states, including Maine, where election officials confirmed Wednesday that he met the deadline to withdraw. However, Kennedy has urged supporters to continue backing him in other states.

On Wednesday, lawyers for Kennedy asked an appeals court in New York to reinstate him on the presidential ballot in the state after a judge’s ruling earlier this month.

Albany Supreme Court Justice Christina Ryba ruled on August 12 that Kennedy had falsely claimed to be a New York resident on the petition forms. The ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed against Kennedy by Clear Choice, a Democratic-aligned political action committee.

The suit claimed that Kennedy’s nominating petition said that he lived in a suburb of Manhattan while he has actually been living in Los Angeles since 2014 with his wife, Cheryl Hines, co-star of HBO sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm.