RFK Jr.’s name to be removed from North Carolina ballots, state Supreme Court rules

(CNN) — Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name will be removed from the North Carolina ballot, the state Supreme Court ruled Monday.

In a 4-3 decision, with both of the Democratic members and one Republican dissenting, the GOP-controlled court wrote that having accurate ballots is more important than the costs and delays that will come from having to reprint the state’s ballots.

Absentee ballots in North Carolina were supposed to start going out on Friday but were held amid the legal fight over Kennedy’s removal after he dropped his independent bid for president. According to the state board of elections, absentee voting could now be delayed nearly two weeks while ballots are reprinted.

“We acknowledge that expediting the process of printing new ballots will require considerable time and effort by our election officials and significant expense to the State,” the majority wrote. “But that is a price the North Carolina Constitution expects us to incur to protect voters’ fundamental right to vote their conscience and have that vote count.”

In guidance to county election boards Monday evening, state board executive director Karen Brinson Bell said that the process of reprinting ballots without Kennedy’s name would continue, and that existing ballots “must be strictly separated and moved to storage to avoid any accidental usage in this election.”

Brinson Bell wrote that counties should not mail out ballots until a uniform date can be set. “We will continue to consult with counties and ballot vendors to determine the feasible start date for distributing absentee ballots statewide,” Brinson Bell wrote.

Under federal law, ballots for overseas and military voters must start going out by September 21, but Brinson Bell wrote that the state board has “already begun discussions with the U.S. Department of Defense to seek a potential waiver of that deadline”

Kennedy dropped out of the presidential race last month and endorsed former President Donald Trump, but the Democratic-controlled state board of elections voted along party lines 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, and a lower court judge sided with the state board on Thursday but gave Kennedy 24 hours to appeal. Friday morning, an appeals court overturned that decision and ordered officials to remove Kennedy’s name from the ballot, which led to the state board asking the state Supreme Court to intervene.

In its decision, the court blamed the state board for the predicament, writing “any harm suffered” by the board because of the order to redo the ballots “is of their own making.”

The court criticized the board for continuing to prepare ballots even after Kennedy announced that he was suspending his candidacy on August 23.

Brinson Bell responded to the court in her note to the counties, writing, “by the time Kennedy’s campaign got a message to the State Board asking about the process to withdraw the evening of August 26, more than half of counties had started printing ballots and, at that point, it would have been impossible to reprint and meet the 60-day deadline” for ballots to start going out.

Counties will be responsible for the costs of reprinting the ballots, which Brinson Bell acknowledged in her note. “We know the hardship this imposes on you and your counties, and we deeply regret that.”

Democratic Justice Allison Riggs criticized both the appeals court and Kennedy in a blistering dissent.

“The magnitude of the harm wrought by the Court of Appeals’ order, both to voters of the state who have been guaranteed by their elected legislature sixty days in which to receive and cast absentee ballots and to the overworked and underpaid public servants working as election administrators in a time when such service has subjected those public servants to harassment and peril… is egregious and unjustified,” Riggs wrote.

Riggs accused Kennedy of wanting to “have his cake and eat it, too.”

“Forcing the state to put his name on the ballot, creating for the state costs both practical and legal, he now wants to reprint millions of ballots because he has decided to suspend his campaign without actually ending it or foreclosing the possibility of his election,” Riggs wrote.

The decision to remove Kennedy from the ballot came the day as the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that his name must remain on the state’s ballot. Kennedy is also challenging the Wisconsin Elections Commission’s decision to keep him on the ballot in that 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 major party should still vote for him. However, he reversed that position in a fundraising message last week, telling his supporters to back Trump “no matter what state you live in.”

This story has been updated with additional details.

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