Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will remain on Wisconsin’s presidential ballot, as the state Supreme Court delivered a bold ruling on Friday.
They upheld a lower court’s decision that candidates can only be removed from the ballot if they pass away, reported AP News.
Kennedy’s potential role in a second Donald Trump administration has been a topic of discussion for some time.
According to a Benzinga report from July, Kennedy, then an independent presidential candidate, had talks with Trump about endorsing his campaign and possibly taking up a senior role in his administration.
In August, Kennedy suspended his presidential campaign and endorsed Trump. He stated that he didn’t believe he had a real chance of winning the 2024 election and that his continued presence in the race would result in a Democratic Party victory.
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The latest unanimous ruling from the liberal-led court adds yet another twist to Kennedy’s attempts to pull his name from ballots in critical battleground states, where the competition between Republican Trump and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris is intensifying.
The ruling arrived after over 418,000 absentee ballots were already dispatched to voters. As of Thursday, nearly 28,000 of those had been returned, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
On September 3, Kennedy filed a lawsuit in Wisconsin, seeking a court order to have his name removed from the ballot, AP News added. He contended that third-party candidates face discrimination, as state law treats them differently than Republican and Democratic presidential contenders.
On September 16, Dane County Circuit Judge Stephen Ehlke ruled that Wisconsin law explicitly states that once candidates submit valid nomination papers, they stay on the ballot unless they pass away. The judge noted that numerous election clerks had already printed ballots featuring Kennedy’s name.
Independent and third-party candidates could play a crucial role in Wisconsin, where four of the last six presidential elections were decided by margins ranging from about 5,700 to 23,000 votes. In 2016, Green Party candidate Jill Stein received over 31,000 votes, surpassing Trump’s winning margin of just under 23,000. Some Democrats attributed Trump’s victory in the state and the presidency to Stein’s candidacy, AP News added.
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