A Nevada judge on Monday ruled that the Green Party will appear on the November presidential ballot, rejecting an appeal by the state Democratic Party, opening the door for a third party to potentially steal votes from Vice President Harris.
The Green Party has not appeared on Nevada’s ballot since 2008. A petition to get the party on the 2024 ballot was challenged by the state Democratic Party, which claimed some of the signatures submitted were invalid.
Carson City Municipal Court Judge Christine Lewis The verdict was given On Monday, the challenge was not enough to disqualify the Greens from the vote.
“The Democrats have not presented sufficient evidence showing that the petitions received fewer than the required number of valid signatures in any petition precinct and therefore have not met their burden of establishing that the petitions are clearly invalid,” she wrote.
The ruling came just two weeks before the deadline for third-party lawsuits to be filed in Nevada.
Green Party candidate Jill Stein celebrated the ruling in a post on Monday.
“In June, the Nevada Democratic Party filed a lawsuit to remove the Green Party of Nevada from the ballot after submitting nearly three times the number of signatures required,” Stein said. He wrote on Facebook“We are pleased that the ruling was in our favor. We will offer Silver State voters an anti-genocide, pro-worker, action on climate change choice!”
The Green Party’s presence in Nevada could threaten the narrow margin expected in November’s election.
In previous elections, Democrats have accused the Green Party of stealing minority voters in elections where every vote counts, including in Wisconsin’s 2016 election, when Stein won by a larger margin than former President Donald Trump did to defeat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Limited polling of the Trump-Harris race in Nevada shows Trump leading Harris by 2.4 percentage points, according to The Hill/Decision Desk polling average. No polls including Stein have been conducted in the state yet.
