The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Monday allowed Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein to run in state elections after the state rejected a Democratic challenge to expel her from the state.
The Democratic National Committee, apparently fearing Stein’s candidacy as a third-party candidate would siphon votes away from Vice President Kamala Harris, asked a liberal-majority court last week to order the Wisconsin State Elections Board to prevent Stein’s name from appearing on the November ballot because the Green Party does not have any statewide officeholders or congressional candidates with the power to nominate presidential electors.
“We find that the petitioners are not entitled to the relief they seek,” the court said in an unsigned order, without explaining the reasons for its decision. Associated Press.
Stein, 74, called the ruling “a major victory against the anti-Democrat war on democracy and voters’ choice.”
Wisconsin Green Party co-chair Michael White called the DNC’s efforts “a sign of fear in the Democratic Party.”
“This was an inevitable conclusion, as the complaints were baseless to begin with and we knew it,” he said, according to the Associated Press.
Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Adrienne Watson called the ruling “disappointing” and suggested it was “crystal clear” that Stein’s attempts to challenge Senator Harris and former President Donald Trump for a place in the White House “violated the law.”
Wisconsin, a key battleground state, was won by President Biden over President Trump by just one percentage point (about 21,000 votes) in the 2020 election.
The last time Stein appeared on the Wisconsin ballot, in 2016, she received about 31,000 votes.
That same year, Trump, 78, beat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the state by about 24,000 votes, or less than 1 percentage point.
In her post-election memoir, Clinton blamed Stein’s supporters for her losses in Wisconsin and other battleground states.
“There were enough Stein supporters in each state to sway the outcome, just as Ralph Nader did in Florida and New Hampshire in 2000.” Clinton wrote In his 2017 book, “What Happened.”
The Green Party’s platform reflects many of the left-leaning positions on the Democratic Party’s policy agenda, including restoring abortion rights nationwide, forgiving student loan debt and supporting the Equality Act, which would add sex, sexual orientation and gender identity to the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Before Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gave a surprising endorsement of Trump and dropped out of the race last week, polls were mixed about whether a third-party candidate would do more to thwart Trump than Ms. Harris.
While some recent polls have found Trump trailing Harris when third-party candidates are considered, some of the results from the RealClearPolitics tally show the opposite: Kennedy, who was a leading third-party candidate before dropping out, was pulling more voters away from Trump nationally (9%) than Harris (7%), according to a Fox News poll.
Stein’s appearance on the Wisconsin ballot, which has 10 electoral votes at stake, comes days after a Michigan judge overturned the state’s elections board and allowed independent candidate Cornel West to appear on the state’s ballot.
The Michigan Department of Elections disqualified West earlier this month. “Flaws in notarization” Judge James Robert Redford of the Michigan Court of Claims overturned the elections department’s ruling on Saturday.
Then, on Monday, the Michigan State Board of Elections voted 3-1 to certify the far-left presidential candidate for the Nov. 5 ballot.
But the decision is expected to be appealed by voters who challenge West’s signature on her ballot access application, and a separate appeal of Redford’s Saturday ruling is already being prepared, he said. Detroit Free Press.
