LAS VEGAS — The independent campaign of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for president announced Friday that it has submitted a “second round” of 30,000 signatures to appear on Nevada’s ballot ahead of the Nov. 5 general election.
The latest attempt comes after Kennedy’s first petition was invalidated because it did not include the name of his running mate, Nicole Shanahan.
RFK Jr.’s campaign in Nevada rule The state does not require a vice presidential nominee to be marked on the ballot, and he accused Secretary of State Francisco V. Aguilar of acting “either with total incompetence or partisan political maneuvering” in rejecting earlier attempts to do so.
A lawsuit filed by the campaign against Aguilar, a Democrat, is pending in federal court.
“Nevada voters have demonstrated their enthusiasm and determination for a second time in placing Mr. Kennedy on the ballot in Nevada’s general election,” campaign attorney Paul Rossi said in a statement.
A spokesman for Governor Aguilar said the registrar of voters in each of the state’s 22 counties must submit a “raw tally” of the number of signatures collected within four business days.
If the total number of signatures is higher than the 10,095 needed to place an independent candidate on the ballot, counties will be notified how many signatures they need to verify before the petition will be accepted, a process that must be completed within nine business days.
“The second signature drive gave us a unique perspective,” said Randell Hines, the Kennedy campaign’s Nevada state representative. “We saw that many more Nevadans were aware of Kennedy’s candidacy. We also had hundreds of thousands of direct conversations that we wouldn’t have had otherwise.”
Friday’s lawsuit comes two weeks after two Nevada voters, one of whom is the vice chair of the state Democratic Party, sued Aguilar, arguing that Kennedy is not a true “independent” candidate because he has accepted nominations from minor parties in order to appear on ballots in other states.
The case is ongoing.
RealClearPolitics poll average Kennedy received 7.8% of the vote in the Silver State, far behind President Donald Trump (43.8%) and President Biden (38.8%).
