The Supreme Court rejected Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s request to be removed from the ballot in two crucial swing states—Wisconsin and Michigan—quashing the last-minute attempt from Kennedy, who has since endorsed former President Donald Trump.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said keeping him on the ballot in Michigan and Wisconsin after he requested to ... [+]
The Supreme Court, as is common, did not give reasoning in its decision to reject Kennedy’s argument that the two states were violating his First and Fourteenth Amendment rights by leaving him on the ballot after he requested to be removed.
Justice Neil Gorsuch dissented and said he would have granted the request in Michigan, but no justices dissented in the Wisconsin case.
Kennedy appealed to the Supreme Court on Oct. 21, requesting his name be covered with stickers on the ballots—even though hundreds of thousands of people had already voted—after both state supreme courts ruled his name would stay on the ballot despite suspending his campaign in August.
Forbes has reached out to Kennedy’s team for comment on the decision.
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Kennedy was running for president as an independent, though he began his campaign as a Democrat, until Aug. 23, when he dropped out of the race, acknowledged he did not have a “realistic path to an electoral victory” and endorsed Trump. When he was campaigning, though, Kennedy got his name on the ballot in more than 20 states. After saying he would remove his name from ballots in states where his “presence would be a spoiler,” Kennedy succeeded in getting off the ballot in five of seven key battleground states—Pennsylvania, Nevada, Georgia, Arizona and North Carolina—and a number of other states. When he was running as an independent, both Republicans and Democrats were working to align Kennedy with the opposite party out of concerns his presence on the ballot could hurt them. Since he dropped out, though, Trump has embraced Kennedy and put him on his transition team.
1.3. That’s how many points FiveThirtyEight’s national polling average had Harris leading Trump by as of 5:50 p.m. EDT on Tuesday. RealClearPolitics’ polling average had Trump leading, though, by 0.4 points.
Though he wanted to get off the ballot in states where he was worried about taking votes away from Trump, Kennedy actually petitioned to keep his name on the ballot in historically blue New York. New York state ruled the New York address Kennedy used on his petition was not his “fixed, permanent” home, which it said invalidated his petition and took him off the ballot. Kennedy appealed, but the Supreme Court late last month rejected it.