Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name will be removed from the North Carolina ballot, the state Supreme Court ruled Monday.
In a 4-3 decision, with both of the Democratic members and one Republican dissenting, the GOP-controlled court wrote that having accurate ballots is more important than the costs and delays that will come from having to reprint the state’s ballots.
Absentee ballots in North Carolina were supposed to start going out on Friday but were held amid the legal fight over Kennedy’s removal after he dropped his independent bid for president. According to the state board of elections, absentee voting could now be delayed nearly two weeks while ballots are reprinted.
“We acknowledge that expediting the process of printing new ballots will require considerable time and effort by our election officials and significant expense to the State,” the majority wrote. “But that 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.”…
Democratic Justice Allison Riggs criticized both the appeals court and Kennedy in a blistering dissent.
“The magnitude of the harm wrought by the Court of Appeals’ order, both to voters of the state who have been guaranteed by their elected legislature sixty days in which to receive and cast absentee ballots and to the overworked and underpaid public servants working as election administrators in a time when such service has subjected those public servants to harassment and peril… is egregious and unjustified,” Riggs wrote.
Riggs accused Kennedy of wanting 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,” Riggs wrote.
The decision to remove Kennedy from the ballot came the day as the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that his name must remain on the state’s ballot. Kennedy is also challenging the Wisconsin Elections Commission’s decision to keep him on the ballot in that Midwestern battleground.