As Kennedy Gains Ballot Access in New York State, the Democrats’ Petty and Abusive Legal Plays Persist

By Nikos Biggs-Chiropolos, The Kennedy Beacon

The Democrats are so desperate for your vote that they’re willing to abuse the legal system to get it. So far they’ve struck out in New York, where good news came to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. this week. 

As local news WBUF reports, the Board of Elections has certified more than 108,000 signatures, far surpassing the 45,000 required to put Kennedy on the ballot. New York State has the most stringent ballot access threshold in the country, which led people to assume that obtaining access would be impossible; Kennedy is the only independent or third-party candidate to have succeeded.

Nevertheless, the Democratic Party is pursuing lawsuits in six states to knock Kennedy off the ballot. The party has a history of suing third-party candidates to block them from the ballot. Now, led by a team of lawyers and even PR specialists, the Democrats have launched a barrage of attacks against Kennedy as he gains ballot access and persists in the polls.

It is the fear that Kennedy might pull votes that would otherwise go to Biden in swing states, and thereby potentially tip the scale, that has inspired DNC lawfare. Following Biden’s debate debacle, the Democrats are doubling down on their plan to force competitors off the ballot through litigation instead of winning on merit at the ballot box.

Kennedy’s team has fired back by launching its own lawsuits, including Team Kennedy v. Berger (Berger is the co-chair of the New York State Board of Elections). Team Kennedy sued on the grounds of violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments, arguing that New York’s ballot access rules are unusually difficult requirements for third-party and independent candidates. These suits, as well as the campaign’s victories in various other legal challenges related to ballot access, reaffirm that the campaign is ready and able to fight its way to appearing on the ballot in all 50 states.

Thanks to their vast resources, the Democrats have so far managed to launch lawsuits against Kennedy in six states. These lawsuits pursue different legal strategies, but all reflect the party’s desperation to end Kennedy’s campaign by any means possible.

A Nevada lawsuit is premised on the state’s electoral laws, which define an independent candidate as one “who is registered with no political party affiliation.” As reported by The Nevada Independent, Nevada law states that “a person may not file as an independent candidate if he or she is proposing to run as the candidate of a political party.” Although Kennedy has filed as an independent in Nevada, he is running under a party called We the People, which he formed to gain ballot access in other states, and he has been nominated by other existing third parties in a number of other states, including Colorado, California, and Florida. Given that Nevada law does not have any jurisdiction over other states’ laws, this case against Kennedy does not appear to have merit.

A North Carolina lawsuit challenges Kennedy’s means of obtaining ballot access via the We the People Party there, as reported by the News & Observer. In this lawsuit, the DNC-affiliated plaintiffs claim that We the People is a “sham party” and that people were misled when signing the petition to recognize it as an official party, and therefore it should be barred from inclusion.

The North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) did not certify the Constitution Party, We the People, or the Justice Party before the July 1, 2024, deadline for the candidates to present the nomination paperwork for their respective parties. The NCSBE has not given clear explanations for why they did this. However, on July 9 the NCSBE issued a partial ruling that certified the Constitution Party, while leaving RFK Jr.’s and Cornel West’s parties in limbo. WXII 12 reported that the board “plans to meet again soon to decide whether to recognize [the] We the People and Justice For All parties.” 

These attacks are  yet another example of Democrats’ hypocrisy. A lawyer representing the DNC, Robert Lenhard, told The New York Times that the party’s aim “is to ensure all the candidates are playing by the rules, and to seek to hold them accountable when they are not.” However, the Democrats fail to respect their own rules for primaries, as seen in the cases of Bernie Sanders and Tim Canova, as well as that of Kennedy when he follows rigorous signature-gathering procedures to gain ballot access, as reported in the Beacon.

Another lawsuit in New Jersey led by a prominent Democrat lawyer alleges that Kennedy violated the state’s “sore loser law” by running as an independent candidate in the general election after previously having been a candidate in the Democratic primary, as reported in The Hill. The law is meant to prevent losers in the primary from mounting their own general election campaigns. Kennedy, however, announced his independent candidacy before the New Jersey filing deadline and did not appear on ballots in the state’s primary election. The suit rests on the claim that some voters put Kennedy down as a write-in candidate in the primary, but it likely has no merit.

In Delaware, Kennedy is already on the ballot thanks to being nominated by the Independent Party. But, as CBS reports, Democrats are suing to challenge his spot there, claiming that the Independent Party did not file a certificate of nomination for his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, within 10 days of its party convention that nominated him in January.

CBS reports that 13 challenges have been filed in New York and two lawsuits have been publicized, further reflecting the DNC’s desperate attempts to bar Kennedy from the election. In the first case, some DNC-backed New York residents claim that Kennedy’s legal residence is in California, despite the fact that his voter registration, various permits, and vehicles have listed New York as his residence for decades.

According to federal law, a candidate and his or her running mate must be from different states; Nicole Shanahan is a resident of California, so the plaintiffs in this case seek to exploit this technicality to keep Kennedy off all ballots. The New York Law Journal reported this week that the case has been moved from Dutchess County to Albany so that it would be heard in the same city as the state’s Board of Elections, per the request of Kennedy’s lawyers, representing progress in that case.

The second, even more frivolous, New York lawsuit had claimed that 115,000 of the 135,000+ signatures collected by the campaign are invalid. Kennedy needs 45,000 signatures to qualify; the campaign gathered so many more than the minimum number required precisely to protect itself from such invalidation attempts. This lawsuit should be moot now that 108,000 signatures supporting Kennedy’s ballot access in the state have been certified.

The latest lawsuit, in Illinois, was filed by Clear Choice Action, a Democrat super PAC, as reported by the Chicago Sun Times, and it follows a similar script as the group’s New York suit against Kennedy. Clear Choice is challenging 66,487 of the 85,509 signatures submitted by the campaign, alleging that some signers were ineligible and that necessary petition fields were incorrect or incomplete “due to likely fraud and forgery.” In addition, the suit is contesting his listed residency in New York State.

Above all, the Democrats’ legal maneuvers as well as Biden’s refusal to grant Kennedy Secret Service protection, as reported in the Beacon, have burdened his campaign with millions in added expenses. Draining his resources is, of course, part of the DNC’s strategy. However, Kennedy’s campaign has met, and will continue to meet, these challenges. The question is this: What costs are the Democrats’ dirty tricks imposing on American democracy?

Nikos Biggs-Chiropolos studied government at Georgetown University and interned for several Democratic elected officials and their campaigns, and for other affiliated groups. He then earned a master’s degree in urban studies in France, where extremely strict COVID-19 lockdowns led to his political reawakening and inspired him to try to help fix the broken two-party system.