The Nevada Democratic Party has launched two separate legal actions to remove independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the Green Party candidate from the ballot in November’s presidential election.
Both the Biden campaign and former President Trump have criticized Kennedy, but Democrats in particular seem to remain infuriated even eight years after data showed Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein surpassed Hillary Clinton’s margin of victory in three battleground states.
Earlier this week, the Nevada Secretary of State’s office announced that the Green Party had collected enough signatures to get on the ballot.
As in 2016, the party nominated self-described “eco-socialist” Howie Hawkins III as its candidate in 2020, but Stein was named as the candidate this time around.
But the Nevada Democratic Party subsequently filed a lawsuit challenging the signatures, reportedly arguing there were too many to meet the threshold of roughly 10,000 cited by Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar this week.
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Aguilar said the Green Party submitted 15,000 valid signatures, but the party claims to have submitted about 30,000 signatures overall. Nevada Independent.
The Nevada Democratic Party received a records request that allowed them to examine a sample of the signatures, which led to a lawsuit.
The party did not respond to multiple attempts by Fox News Digital for comment, but Executive Director Hillary Barnett said in a statement to the Reno Gazette Journal that the party “filed this challenge to preserve our right to inspect petitions pursuant to Nevada law.”
In a statement to Fox News Digital, the U.S. Green Party said the Democrats’ lawsuit is “baseless” and intended to divert attention from third-party support this election cycle.
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“[T]”In November, the choice will be made to oppose war, genocide and climate disaster, and to support national health care, workers’ rights and funding for an eco-socialist Green New Deal to address the current climate crisis,” the statement read.
“Their party has abandoned the working class, so Democrats believe the only way to win the White House is to remove our candidates from the ballot. This is what voter suppression looks like.”
As for Kennedy, the Nevada Democratic Party said the scion of one of the party’s most popular families was ineligible to run because he was registered with different party groups in each state.
A registered Democrat in New York, Kennedy is campaigning on several platforms, including the Populist Party he founded in two states and the Reform Party in Florida.
According to reports, Democrats argued that state law requires Kennedy to register without a party affiliation in order to run as an independent in the state.
In a statement obtained by The Nevada Independent, Barnett said Nevada has a streamlined process for gaining the right to vote and that Kennedy did not meet those requirements.
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The Kennedy campaign did not respond to a request for comment, but it had previously sued Aguilar’s office, arguing that the policy requiring third-party candidates to nominate a running mate before collecting petition signatures is unconstitutional.
The Kennedy campaign argues that the law violates the First and 14th Amendments, with campaign adviser Paul Rossi saying: Associated Press “Courts must prohibit the Secretary of State’s complete incompetence or partisan political maneuvering from invalidating petition signatures that have been given the highest First Amendment protection by the United States Supreme Court.”
In a statement responding to the lawsuit, Aguilar said Nevada has long respected third-party candidates running for public office, and “each of these candidates has earned their right to vote by complying with the law.”
