RALEIGH, North Carolina – A divided elections board in North Carolina decided Wednesday to take a closer look at political organizations’ attempts to become official state parties by collecting signatures, with the goal of their supporters getting Robert F. Kennedy Jr. It is Cornelius West in this fall’s presidential vote in the swing state.
The We the People Party and the Justice for All Party of North Carolina have started petitions to receive official party designations. This required a smaller fraction of valid signatures from registered and qualified voters than Kennedy, an environmental writer and lawyer, and West, a professor and progressive activist, would have needed if they wanted to run statewide as independent candidates.
State election officials confirmed to the board Wednesday that the groups turned in more valid signatures than the 13,865 required. Based on these numbers, the council’s two Republican members supported motions to formally recognize the We the People Party and the Justice for All Party so they could field candidates.
But the three Democrats on the board voted against the motions. They agreed that further analysis of the organization’s operations was needed, including how signatures were collected, how party volunteers presented petition objectives to voters, and what information was placed on petition lists.
Speaking about the We The People effort, Democratic board member Siobhan O’Duffy Millen said she was concerned volunteers misrepresented Kennedy as an independent candidate rather than someone who could be the party’s nominee. An independent candidate would have to collect at least 83,188 qualified signatures.
The “delay is not intended to deny your party status,” board chairman Alan Hirsch told We The People leaders who attended the three-and-a-half-hour online meeting. “It’s just to do our job and make sure that … the people who signed the petition know the purpose and intent” of the proposed party, he added.
The board tentatively scheduled a July 9 board meeting to reconsider the groups’ requests.
The addition of presidential candidates further raises the stakes and uncertainty about who will win North Carolina’s 16 electoral votes. Republican Donald Trump won the state in 2016 and 2020, but his margin over Democrat Joe Biden in 2020 was less than 1.4 percentage points.
Kennedy’s campaign said he is officially on the ballot in eight states and has submitted signatures in 11 more. The West campaign said it has secured ballot access in at least seven states.
Republican board members criticized the Democratic majority’s decisions, saying it was not the board’s place to question the motives of the organization’s leaders.
“I think these people did everything they needed to do to comply with the law,” board member Kevin Lewis said. Another Republican member, Four Eggers, said Democrats were giving in to political groups that filed objections to the certification requests.
Clear Choice Action, a group affiliated with a super PAC aligned with President Joe Biden’s allies, wrote to the council asking its members to reject the efforts of We the People and Justice for All, saying the petitions were riddled with invalid signatures or contained misleading information. Representatives of the petitioners defended their activities.
And the state Democratic Party said the groups were trying to skirt state law by using the guise of a political party to bypass the more arduous qualification process for independent candidates.
National Republicans criticized the board’s decisions Wednesday, with a Trump campaign spokesperson also accusing North Carolina Democrats of working “to manipulate the system to help Biden.”
Another third party seeking official status on Wednesday – the Constitution Party – has also been denied formal recognition for now, which would be reconsidered next month. Hirsch cited an issue involving the group president’s home address.
The Constitution Party was an official party in 2020, but did not perform well enough in the elections to remain so. The national Constitution Party this year nominated anti-abortion activist Randall Terry as its presidential candidate.
State law says parties must submit their lists of candidates for races other than president and vice president to the state board by July 1.
Otherwise, parties are instructed to submit their presidential candidacies by mid-August so ballots can be prepared, a council spokesperson said recently. Hirsch said he believes a federal judge’s ruling two years ago involving recognition of the Green Party would mean other candidates could be added to the ballot after July 1.
