Robert F Kennedy Jr’s campaign for president failed – but his campaign to avoid being a spoiler in North Carolina and Michigan appears for the moment to be more successful.
The North Carolina court of appeals made a last-minute decision on Friday to remove Kennedy’s name from presidential ballots, creating a scramble to reprint ballots and begin sending them to voters.
In Michigan, a state appellate court also ruled on Friday that Kennedy’s name as the Natural Law party’s candidate must be stricken from ballots. The Michigan secretary of state’s office said it would appeal to the state supreme court.
Kennedy has been fighting to remove his name from ballots in swing states ever since dropping out and endorsing Donald Trump. Speaking to reporters after the endorsement, Kennedy said that his polling consistently showed he would “likely hand the election over to the Democrats” in battleground states where he was on the ballot.
North Carolina has emerged as such a battleground state. Trump won North Carolina by 1.3 percentage points in 2020, a margin of about 75,000 votes, the closest state in which Trump prevailed. Third-party candidates won about 82,000 votes in North Carolina that year.
Michigan is also considered a key battleground state, with Kamala Harris up by two points over Trump in the Project 538 polling aggregate.
In North Carolina, state law requires the first absentee ballots to be mailed or transmitted no later than 60 days before the general election, making Friday the deadline.
That deadline has now been blown, since it will take weeks for the ballots to be reprinted. The court also ordered a pause in ballot distribution. Democratic party attorneys fought the ruling and may appeal to the state supreme court.
Paul Cox, the North Carolina board of elections’ general counsel, sent an email to county elections directors after the ruling, telling them to hold on to the current ballots with Kennedy’s name on them. More than 2.9m absentee and in-person ballots have been printed so far.
“Do not send any ballots out today,” Cox wrote. “Obviously, this will be a major undertaking for everyone. Our attorneys are reviewing the order and determining how to move forward. No decision has been made on whether this ruling will be appealed. Bottom line: continue to hold your outgoing absentee ballots – both military and overseas citizen ballots, and ballots for civilian voters. We will update you immediately with any further developments.”
More than 130,000 absentee ballots have been requested so far. North Carolina is home to many major military bases, including the Marine Corps’ Camp Lejeune and Fort Liberty (formerly named Fort Bragg), with an unusually large number of residents serving in other states or overseas.
The Democratic majority on the North Carolina board of elections rejected Kennedy’s initial request to remove his name from the ballot, saying it was too late in the process of printing ballots and coding tabulation machines. Kennedy then sued.
Rebecca Holt, a Wake county superior court judge, on Thursday denied Kennedy’s effort to keep his name off ballots, prompting his appeal. In the meantime, Holt told election officials to hold back sending absentee ballots until noon on Friday.
Since Kennedy suspended his campaign, he has tried to get his name removed from ballots in several states where the race between Trump and Harris is expected to be close.
Kennedy on Wednesday sued in Wisconsin to get his name removed from the presidential ballot there after the state elections commission voted to keep him on it.
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