RFK Jr. ballot challenge further delays start of voting in North Carolina
An election worker displays a test ballot listing the US presidential candidates at the Wake County Board of Elections headquarters in Raleigh
(CNN) — The start of voting in North Carolina, which was scheduled to begin Friday, will be further delayed to let legal proceedings play out after an appeals court ordered the state to remove former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name from the ballot.
In an email obtained by CNN, North Carolina Board of Elections general counsel Paul Cox told county election boards to hold outgoing ballots.
“Our attorneys are reviewing the order and determining how to move forward,” Cox wrote. “No decision has been made on whether this ruling will be appealed.”
Kennedy dropped out of the race last month and endorsed former President Donald Trump, but North Carolina’s Democratic-controlled State Board of Elections voted along party lines last week to reject Kennedy’s request to remove his name from the ballot, saying that it wouldn’t be practical to reprint ballots and delay the start of voting.
Kennedy challenged the decision in court, and a judge ruled Thursday that his name should remain on the ballot but ordered the state to delay sending ballots out until noon on Friday to give the former candidate time to appeal, leading to the new order by the appeals court Friday morning.
A court win in Michigan
Kennedy scored another court victory in a battleground state Friday when a Michigan appeals court ordered state election officials to remove his name from the ballot, overruling a lower court’s decision. The appeals court ruled that state officials had improperly denied Kennedy’s request to be struck from the ballot after he suspended his presidential campaign.
A spokesperson for Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, told CNN Friday that the decision would be appealed to the state Supreme Court.
Kennedy is also challenging the Wisconsin Elections Commission’s decision to keep him on the ballot in the Midwestern battleground.
Since endorsing Trump, Kennedy has sought to withdraw his name from the ballot in competitive states in order to boost the former president’s chances of winning there.
Initially, Kennedy said that his supporters in states seen as safe for either party should still vote for him. However, in a fundraising message Thursday, he reversed that position, telling his supporters to back Trump “no matter what state you live in.”
North Carolina officials in ‘holding pattern’
While the North Carolina State Board of Elections decides whether to appeal Friday’s court decision, county election officials are in a “holding pattern,” according to Michael Dickerson, the director of the Mecklenburg County election board.
“We’re told to not send anything out just yet – ‘Do not send ballots out today’ – with the new court order,” Dickerson said. “We’ll wait and see. (The) state board wants to see if they’re going to appeal this, and if they decide to appeal, we’ll see how far that takes it and how much more we have to go.”
If the Court of Appeals order stands, counties would need to go through the full process with ballots before any can be sent out.
“I would hope that we would be able to get this out in less than two weeks. I think the state was saying a 10-day delay. If that’s the case, I think we could make that work,” Dickerson said. “We could start getting the ballots out. The most important thing is getting the overseas and military ballots out to those folks.”
“It’s starting over. I remove the party, I remove the names, I then regenerate ballots. I then have to test every ballot. I have to have the state approve it and test everything. And then I have to reprint the 20,000 that I got going out,” Dickerson added, noting that this would be taking place as additional requests for ballots come in as well.
Dickerson said he wanted to reassure voters that neither the flurry of legal activity nor the delays would affect the integrity of the actual ballot creation process.
“We’ll get it done,” he said. “We’re going to make sure everything is working perfectly, no matter what way we send the ballots out or if we have to stop and start over again.”
“We’re confident in our practices that we have here that we’ll make it work, and it will be a great election for the voters of North Carolina,” Dickerson said.
This story has been updated with additional information.
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