Weekly Ballot Access News: Kennedy Adds Three New States and Overcomes Challenges from Democrats

By Leah Watson, Breaking News Reporter, The Kennedy Beacon

On July 24, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that his campaign has filed for ballot access in Louisiana, where independent presidential candidates can gain ballot access for a $500 fee, instead of collecting signatures. 

Kennedy has also qualified for the Indiana ballot, as reported by the Indianapolis Star, and in Nebraska.

Two weeks ago, The Kennedy Beacon reported that the campaign had submitted over 105,000 signatures in Indiana. Now, more than 46,000 of those signatures have been approved and certified by the communications director for Indiana’s secretary of state, Lindsey Eaton.

In Nebraska, Kennedy and his team submitted 5,023 signatures to gain ballot access. Before Kennedy’s petition completed the validation process, on July 16, the Nebraska Democratic Party filed a complaint with Nebraska’s secretary of state, Robert Evnen. Their argument centers on the question of Kennedy’s “nonpartisan” status, stating that Kennedy and his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, have not met the requirements to form a “nonpartisan” ticket because Kennedy was a registered Democrat as of March 1, 2024. 

Despite the complaint, the Nebraska secretary of state’s office announced that they have certified Kennedy’s ballot access petition, officially placing him on the state’s ballot. The secretary of state considered the complaint submitted by the Democratic Party but determined that “the matters raised did not require that Kennedy be kept off the ballot.”

At the time of this writing, the Kennedy-Shanahan campaign is on the ballot in 13 states: California, Delaware, Hawaii, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, and now Louisiana, Indiana, and Nebraska. The campaign has submitted enough signatures in 12 additional states and has collected enough signatures to qualify for the ballot in four more.

At the end of July, signature filings are due in Missouri and Massachusetts. We expect Kennedy’s ballot access drive to ramp up in August, when 25 states have signature deadlines, including 15 with deadlines in the first seven days of the month.

DNC Files Three New Cases 

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) is attempting to keep Kennedy from achieving ballot access in all 50 states by filing new challenges against him in Nebraska, Georgia, and Texas. Ballot access challenges by the DNC or their affiliates are already underway in six other states.

In Nebraska, the Democratic Party alleges that Kennedy and his campaign are only trying to gain ballot access through the nonpartisan ticket because it is “part of their overall strategy of seeking access to state election ballots through whichever method they perceive to be the easiest.” The complaint cites that Kennedy and Shanahan are on the ballots in several states through minor-party nominations, including the Libertarian Party of Colorado, the American Independent Party of California, the Independent Party of Delaware, the Reform Party in Florida, the Natural Law Party in Michigan, and the Alliance Party in South Carolina. Kennedy is also on the ballot in Hawaii and North Carolina through We the People, a minor party that his campaign created. 

A similar challenge has been mounted in Georgia by Democrats who are trying to prevent citizens from voting for third parties. This time the complaint includes not just Kennedy, but independent presidential candidate Cornel West, Claudia De la Cruz of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and Jill Stein of the Green Party. 

As reported by the Associated Press, the Democratic Party of Georgia’s executive director, Tolulope Kevin Olasanoye, said, “We take the nomination process very seriously and believe everyone should follow the rules.” Olasanoye also claimed that Kennedy, West, De la Cruz, and Stein “have not faithfully observed the state of Georgia’s election law” and have missed “statutory deadlines, skipped filing fees, submitted the wrong names on the nomination petitions, and some failed to hold conventions.” The hypocrisy is evident, given that the Democrats fail to follow their own rules, as reported in The Kennedy Beacon. 

According to a recent Kennedy campaign press release, 21,000 signatures were submitted in Georgia on July 9, the deadline. However, in the name of “saving Democracy,” the Democratic Party is arguing that Kennedy’s petition signatures were incorrectly filled out and should, therefore, be invalidated. The Democratic Party has also argued that as an independent candidate, Kennedy must submit separate petitions for all 16 electors in Georgia, and that his electors failed to pay the required filing fees.

The DNC also launched a legal attack on Kennedy in Texas. They sent a letter to the secretary of state Jane Nelson’s office claiming that after an internal review, 69% of Kennedy’s first 245,000 signatures were invalid, as reported by KVUE. Texas has an unusual requirement stating that any registered voter who casts a vote in the primary cannot sign a petition to include an independent candidate in the general election. 

The Kennedy campaign responded to the DNC accusation by saying, according to the KVUE report, “Our independent signature validation company thoroughly reviewed them and confirmed that we have more than enough [signatures] to secure a place on the Texas ballot. We have a perfect record of defeating DNC challenges and look forward to doing the same in Texas.”

That perfect record, however, is not keeping the Democratic Party from filing increasingly dubious lawsuits against Kennedy’s ballot access drive across the country.