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| Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Credit Wikimedia Commons |
by Melisaundra Welles
It was hard for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign to get his name on states’ ballots throughout the country. Running as an Independent or under the banners of various third-parties, Kennedy had to obtain precise numbers of signatures and meet other specific requirements of each state in order to access their ballots. Sometimes he had to litigate. And, in many states, none of the ballot process was cheap. In New York alone, Kennedy reportedly spent $1.1 million in an attempt to get on that state’s ballot.[i] He ultimately failed there because New York judges objected to him using a sham address to finagle his way onto the ballot.[ii]
Kennedy’s been denied in other places, too, but there are plenty of states where he’s succeeded. Even through worker layoffs and drastic dips in cash, he and his campaign persisted until his name is set to appear in roughly half of the 50 states in November.[iii]
From the start, though, it was pretty clear that Kennedy wasn’t in it to win it. He simply wanted to be a spoiler to defeat President Biden and leave open a path for a Donald Trump victory. Rita Palma, a Kennedy campaign official based in New York, said as much out loud. According to an early April 2024 CNN article, Palma had “… repeatedly made the case, including in a meeting with Empire State Republicans, that efforts to put Kennedy on the ballot in New York will help “get rid of Biden…” That was her ‘No. 1 priority,’ which she assessed would “make it easier for Trump to win the historically Democratic state.”[iv]
Palma got fired for admitting that openly,[v] but she couldn’t have been all wrong. Regardless of the sequence of events that got us to where we are today (including the appearance of Vice President Kamala Harris at the top of the Democratic ticket), Kennedy has suspended his campaign in as many swing states as possible and has tossed his endorsement to Donald Trump.
In exchange, Trump praised Kennedy at an Arizona rally and pledged, if elected, to create an independent presidential commission on assassinations … to release all remaining documents related to John F. Kennedy's assassination. Trump further iterated that he'd “establish a panel … to investigate the increase in chronic health problems and childhood diseases, including autoimmune disorders, autism, obesity and infertility.”[vi]
Those pledges meshed seamlessly with Kennedy’s interests: The first would provide answers to questions he might have about his uncle’s death, and the second gives a nod to Kennedy’s plans for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), should he become president. In a 2023 conference for the Children’s Health Defense (the nation’s largest anti-vaccine organization), Kennedy described his plan for the NIH. “I’m gonna say to NIH scientists, God bless you all[.] … Thank you for [your] public service. We’re going to give infectious disease a break for about eight years.”[vii]
Kennedy is a major proponent of anti-vaccine misinformation and was especially prolific with conspiracy theories during the COVID-19 pandemic. His intent to dismantle the NIH’s work on infectious diseases would be disastrous to the health and safety of this country.
Nevertheless, even in the face of Trump’s capitulations, Kennedy still wanted voters to continue to support him in non-battleground states. Then, on September 5, 2024, Kennedy had an epiphany. He instructed—in a fundraising email—that all his supporters everywhere should cast their votes for Trump.[viii]
Was it really that easy? A simple email to let the country know that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. had once more changed his mind? If, in fact, it is that easy, then it is deeply offensive.
Just as offensive is the fact that there sit on the North Carolina Supreme Court four justices who allow Kennedy to operate in their State and abuse the electoral rights of its citizens. Not only does it allow him — the Court enables him by issuing an Order in Kennedy v. The North Carolina State Board of Elections that gives him rights that the written law itself doesn’t provide.
In that Order, the Court majority simply plays in our faces, pretending to not know what the law demands. It twists the facts so that they align perfectly with the outcome that it wants, casting the State Board of Elections as a negligent agent with unclean hands. It acts as though legal deadlines don’t matter when thousands of our service members and U.S. citizens living abroad risk losing their right to participate in one of the most critical elections of our lifetime. It pretends that recipients who can read ballots can’t also read a notice informing them that a candidate has resigned and that a vote for said candidate won’t count.
The Court majority pretends to not know that there are 2,348 different ballot styles that must be: (a) proofed to ensure they meet the criteria for official ballots; (b) coded to ensure that the vote tabulators correctly read the contest and candidate on the ballot; and (c) quality-controlled tested before printing. The cost of destroying approximately 3 million proofed, coded, tested and printed ballots and substituting them with new ballots can be a “significant expense to the State.” The Court majority knows that. It just doesn’t care because, according to its Order, “… [T]hat is a price the North Carolina Constitution expects us to incur to protect voters’ fundamental right to vote their conscience and have that vote count.”[ix]
For those of us who really don’t know the law, the Court majority’s 6-page, double-spaced Order might be easily persuasive. We might walk away thinking that maybe the decision was a good and just one.
But in this case, there’s a Court minority that tells us that’s not so.
In his dissenting opinion, Justice Richard Dietz informs us that “This Court’s role is to follow the law as it is written. In my view, our election laws permitted the State Board of Elections to decline to reprint the new ballots but also compelled the Board to take other steps … to inform voters that Kennedy resigned and that a vote for him would not count.”
Justice Dietz further explains that “resigning as a candidate” is not the same “as having his name removed from the ballot.” Therefore, Kennedy’s resignation did not give him an automatic right to have his name removed from the ballot if the Board of Elections deemed it impractical to do so. The justice opined that, given the legal deadlines concerning the mailing of ballots to service members and citizens living abroad, the Board of Elections was correct to decline a reprint. The Board needed only to notify the voters requesting absentee ballots of Kennedy’s resignation and also to place notices at all polling locations.
Such an action would have negated the waste of time and “significant expense” that the Court majority forced upon the Board of Elections and the State.
In her dissent (joined by Justice Anita Earls), Justice Allison Riggs wasted no time in expressing her annoyance with Kennedy’s machinations. She wrote: “Elections—the cornerstone of our democracy—are not games or exercises in ego-stroking. With a disturbing disregard for the impact on millions of North Carolina voters, plaintiff Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., … seeks to have his cake and eat it, too. Forcing the state to put his name on the ballot, creating for the state costs both practical and legal, he now wants to reprint millions of ballots because he has decided to suspend his campaign without actually ending it or foreclosing the possibility of his election.”
Justice Riggs went a step further and opined that Kennedy didn’t even have a statutory right to resign. He may be permitted to resign, but such resignation gave him no right to have his name removed from the ballot. Justice Riggs also demolished Kennedy’s compelled/free speech claim and noted that “[T]he Court of Appeals’ gross overstep of its powers, in disregard of the duly-enacted law of this state and of the federal and state constitutions, has and will cause further irreparable harm to this state, magnifying the harm of Mr. Kennedy’s apparent gamesmanship.”
She later noted that the actions of the Court of Appeals (requiring the Board of Elections to remove Kennedy’s name from the ballots, which effectively deprived voters of one-quarter of the absentee voting period) “should evoke constitutional and institutional outrage in any reasonable high court.”
In the meantime, absentee voting is on hold in North Carolina, while the County Boards of Elections are designing and prepping new ballots for printing and distribution. Under a new schedule, all 100 counties must send absentee ballots to eligible military and overseas citizens who requested ballots on Friday, September 20, 2024 (allowing North Carolina to meet the federal deadline of September 21). The counties must send ballots to the remainder of voters who have requested ballots by mail on September 24, 2024. The cost of the ballot reprints vary but estimates range from a few thousand dollars in smaller counties to $300,000 in Wake County, which has the most registered voters in the state.[x]
In her separate dissent (joined by Justice Riggs), Justice Earls notes that, "Importantly, the 100 county boards of election, not the state, bear the cost and responsibility of printing and distributing ballots."
Endnotes
[i] “The insane price tag that RFK Jr. paid to get on NY’s ballot,” Golden, V., New York Post, https://nypost.com/2024/05/28/us-news/the-insane-price-tag-that-rfk-jr-paid-to-get-on-the-ballot-in-new-york/. May 28, 2024. Retrieved September 13, 2024.
[ii] “Judge rules against Robert F Kennedy Jr in fight to be on New York’s ballot,” The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/12/robert-f-kennedy-jr-new-york-residence-ballot. August 12, 2024. Retrieved September 13, 2024. See also “NY appellate court rules RFK Jr. used false address to get on ballot,” Clark, D., TimesUnion, https://www.timesunion.com/capitol/article/court-upholds-ruling-kicking-rfk-jr-n-y-ballot-19731448.php. August 29, 2024. Retrieved September 13, 2024.
[iii] “Map shows where RFK Jr. is on the ballot in the 2024 election.” Yilek, C. and Novelo, A., CBS News, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rfk-jr-map-on-the-ballot-states/ Updated September 12, 2024. Retrieved September 13, 2024.
[iv] “RFK Jr. New York campaign official says her ‘No. 1 priority’ is preventing a Biden victory,” Pellish, A. and McEnd, E., CNN, https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/08/politics/rfk-jr-new-york-biden-trump/index.html. Updated April 8, 2024. Retrieved September 14, 2024.
[v] “RFK Jr. campaign fires staffer who said defeating Biden was her No. 1 priority,” Concepcion, S., Kamisar, B., and Koretski, K., NBC News, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/rfk-jr-campaign-fires-new-york-staffer-said-defeating-biden-was-no-1-p-rcna147341. April 11, 2024. Retrieved September 14, 2024.
[vi] “RFK Jr. endorses Trump and spends presidential campaign,” Watson, K and Novelo, A., CBS News, Contributors: Quinn, M. and Woodall, H., https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rfk-jr-ends-presidential-bid/. Updated August 23, 2024. Retrieved September 15, 2024. See also “RFK Jr. suspends his presidential bid and backs Donald Trump before appearing with him at his rally,” Cooper, J., Price, M. and Sandoval, G., AP, https://apnews.com/article/rfk-jr-trump-speech-arizona-a2638f89ddcb5de03edbe4574ca17d45. Updated August 23, 2024. Retrieved September 15, 2024.
[vii] “RFK Jr. comes ‘home’ to his anti-vaccine group, commits a “break” for U.S. infectious disease research,” Zadrozny B., NBC News, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/rfk-jr-comes-home-anti-vaccine-group-commits-break-us-infectious-disea-rcna123551. November 3, 2023. Retrieved September 15, 2024.
[viii] “RFK Jr. abandons plans to seek votes in uncompetitive states,” Sherer, M. and Kornfield, M., The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/09/05/rfk-jr-ballots-election-trump/. September 5, 2024. Retrieved September 15, 2024.
[ix] “Top North Carolina court rules ballots must be printed without RFK Jr.’s name,” Fortinsky, S., The Hill, https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4871613-north-carolina-supreme-court-rfk-jr-ballot-win/. September 10, 2024. Retrieved September 16, 2024. See also “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has Sabotaged Early Voting in a Critical Swing State,” Stern, M.J., Slate, https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/09/north-carolina-robert-kennedy-early-voting-trump-sabotage.html. September 12, 2024. Retrieved September 13, 2024.
[x] “Absentee Ballots Go Out to Military and Overseas Voters on Sept. 20, All Other Voters Who Requested Them on Sept. 24.” State Board of Elections Press Release, https://www.ncsbe.gov/news/press-releases/2024/09/13/absentee-ballots-go-out-military-and-overseas-voters-sept-20-all-other-voters-who-requested-them. September 13, 2024. Retrieved September 16, 2024.
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