The Georgia Supreme Court ruled that votes for third-party presidential candidates Cornel West and Claudia De la Cruz would not be counted.
In a unanimous vote, the court determined that while West and De la Cruz met the minimum requirement of collecting 7,500 petition signatures to qualify for the ballot, neither submitted those signatures in the name of one of the 16 possible state electors, as required by state law.
West and De la Cruz cleared the minimum of 7,500 petition signatures to qualify for the ballot, but state law requires those signatures to be submitted in the name of one of a candidate’s 16 possible state electors. The court ruled neither West nor De la Cruz electors meet that requirement.
“But the defect that prevents independent presidential candidates West and De la Cruz from appearing on Georgia’s ballot does not pertain to the number of signatures acquired; it is that West’s electors and De la Cruz’s electors filed no nomination petitions at all,” Justice Sarah Warren wrote.
The court’s ruling had affirmed the decisions of two lower court judges who found West and De la Cruz were not in compliance with state law. The case was brought to the state Supreme Court after Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger did not comply with the court rulings.
“No constitutional challenge to the current statutory scheme for qualifying candidates for the office of elector of independent candidates for president is properly before this court in these cases,” Warren wrote. “We therefore express no view on any such constitutional questions today.”
Raffensperger said neither candidate will be removed from the November ballot as there is not enough time nor enough paper.
Instead, Raffensperger will be issuing notices to all polling locations and mail-out ballots that votes for De la Cruz or West will be counted.
“Today’s ruling affirms what two judges have already found: neither of these candidates is qualified to be on the ballot, and the Secretary of State attempting to ignore the judges’ rulings doesn’t make state election law any less clear,” Democratic Party of Georgia Executive Director Tolulope Kevin Olasanoye told the Associated Press.
Third-party candidates such as West, De la Cruz, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have been the target of Democratic operatives who fear they will be siphoning off votes from Vice President Kamala Harris.
In 2020, President Joe Biden won Georgia by fewer than 12,000 votes.
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“Democratic Party lawyers and the Republican-majority Supreme Court worked together to suppress democracy,” De la Cruz said. “This unjust ruling is a reminder of why it is so urgent to build an alternative outside the two-party system.”
The Georgia ballot will see Harris representing the Democratic Party, former President Donald Trump for the Republican Party, Jill Stein for the Green Party, and Chase Oliver for the Libertarian Party.