Judges in Michigan and North Carolina have sided with former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy’s bid to remove his name from 2024 ballots to help Donald Trump.
Kennedy suspended his campaign last month and endorsed the former president, quickly drawing a rebuke from siblings and other members of his famous Democratic family for backing the GOP nominee.
While Kennedy urged supporters to vote for him in states where his name remained on the ballot, he vowed to withdraw from ballots in swing states where he believes he could act as a “spoiler” and help Vice President Kamala Harris defeat Trump.
In North Carolina, where Harris is hoping to become the first Democratic presidential candidate to win since 2008, already printed absentee ballots were ready to be put in mailboxes on Friday before an appeals court granted Kennedy’s last-second request to force election officials to remove his name.
An appeals court in Michigan issued a similar ruling on Friday, ordering state officials to remove Kennedy’s name even though Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson previously declined to do so because the request was made after a state deadline.
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Political analyst and Dillard University professor Robert Collins told Newsweek that he did not think Kennedy’s name being on or off the ballot in either state was “going to make very much difference at all at this point in time.”
“It’s important to keep in mind that RFK voters are primarily anti-establishment, anti-two-party-system people who did not like either candidate,” Collins said. “I argue that a large chunk of those people are simply going to stay home and not vote.”
Newsweek reached out to Kennedy by email for comment on Friday.
Benson has vowed to appeal the decision to the Michigan Supreme Court. Ballots have not yet been printed in the state, but some are scheduled to be sent out on September 21, while the deadline for making any changes to ballots was Friday.
North Carolina officials are complying with the order to hold off on sending out ballots, but so far have not decided on whether to launch an appeal to a higher state court.
State law in North Carolina requires that absentee ballots be sent out no later than 60 days before Election Day, leaving officials with no time to print new ballots and meet the deadline.
North Carolina Democratic Party Chairwoman Anderson Clayton told CNN that Kennedy’s name should remain because “ballots were supposed to go out today,” while denouncing “great corruption in our court of appeals with the Republican takeover.”
Both appeals court decisions on Friday reversed previous rulings that denied Kennedy’s requests to remove himself from the ballots.
While the impact of Kennedy’s name being taken off the ballots is debatable, if a significant number of would-be Kennedy voters back Trump instead, it could prove to be a decisive factor in battleground states decided by razor-thin margins.
Political analyst Craig Agranoff told Newsweek on Friday that “even a small shift in voter turnout or preferences could make a difference” in swing states.
However, Agranoff expressed some doubts about whether Kennedy being off the ballot would benefit Trump or Harris, arguing that “it could hurt either campaign depending on how they pivot to capture those now-available votes.”
An average of recent polls compiled by polling analysis site FiveThirtyEight shows that Trump is leading Harris in North Carolina by just 0.6 percent as of Friday, putting the Tar Heel State within Democrats’ reach.
In 2020, Trump defeated President Joe Biden in North Carolina by fewer than 75,000 votes, or a little more than 1 percent of the total vote.
The election is also expected to be close in Michigan, a state that Biden won by around 154,000 votes, or just under 3 percent, in 2020. The FiveThirtyEight average shows Harris leading Trump by 2 percent.
Meanwhile, a judge denied Kennedy’s request to block a decision that would keep his name on the ballot in Wisconsin on Friday, although further hearings on the matter are scheduled.
