DOVER — After independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dropped his presidential bid Aug. 23 and endorsed former President Donald Trump, questions arose regarding his ballot status in key battleground states and beyond.
While the Kennedy campaign has attempted to remove the candidate’s name from ballots in states like Michigan and Wisconsin, election officials there confirmed he would remain on both tickets Nov. 5, according to The Associated Press.
Meantime, in Delaware, Mr. Kennedy and his running mate, Silicon Valley-based attorney Nicole Shanahan, will also stay on voters’ ballots.
“The Delaware Department of Elections received, reviewed and accepted documentation from the Independent Party of Delaware, nominating Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Nicole Shanahan for the offices of president and vice president of the United States, respectively,” said Cathleen Carter, a department spokesperson.
“These candidates are qualified to appear on Delaware’s general election ballot. The department has not received any request from the Independent Party of Delaware to withdraw these nominations.”
Mr. Kennedy — the son of former U.S. attorney general Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of former President John F. Kennedy — will also be on the ticket in Maryland, that state’s election officials confirmed Tuesday.
In Maryland, Mr. Kennedy needed 10,000 signatures to appear on the ballot, and more than 15,000 were verified by the elections department, according to a letter by state elections administrator Jared DeMarinis.
The Associated Press reported that, in Maryland, Kennedy supporters collected more than 27,000 signatures for his ballot eligibility.
When Mr. Kennedy ended his bid, he said he would attempt to remove his name from ballots in 10 battleground states but that he would remain on others, meaning supporters could still vote for him Nov. 5.
Despite his efforts, he will stay on the ballot in Nevada, along with Michigan and Wisconsin.
In Pennsylvania, Mr. Kennedy was granted removal the afternoon of his withdrawal announcement, after filing a request in the state’s Commonwealth Court.
“The chronic disease crisis was one of the primary reasons for my running for president, along with ending the censorship in the Ukraine war,” Mr. Kennedy said upon withdrawing from the race Aug. 23 in Phoenix. “It’s the reason I’ve made the heart-wrenching decision to suspend my campaign and to support President Trump.
“Furthermore, our polling consistently showed that, by staying on the ballot in the battleground states, I would likely hand the election over to the Democrats, with whom I disagree on the most existential issues: censorship, war and chronic disease.”
The Kennedy campaign had seen rounds of controversy since he announced his Democratic bid for president in April 2023. Later that year, he said he was pursuing a third-party bid to combat the two-party structure, which he called a “rigged system of rancor and rage, corruption and lies.”
Democrats and Republicans had feared that Mr. Kennedy would take votes away from their respective candidates, thus swaying the election in the other party’s favor.
Then, on July 16, a leaked phone call between Mr. Kennedy and President Trump was posted to X, in which the latter appeared to suggest they work together in the future.
And, in an Aug. 20 interview with Ms. Shanahan on the YouTube series “Impact Theory,” she suggested that Mr. Kennedy could be a fit in the Trump administration as the secretary of health and human services.
Following the suspension of the independent campaign, the Kennedy family denounced Mr. Kennedy’s decision to endorse President Trump in an Aug. 23 statement posted to X by his sister, Kerry Kennedy.
“We want an America filled with hope and bound together by a shared vision of a brighter future, a future defined by individual freedom, economic promise and national pride. We believe in (Kamala) Harris and (Tim) Walz,” the statement reads.
“Our brother Bobby’s decision to endorse Trump today is a betrayal of the values that our father and our family hold most dear. It is a sad end to a sad story.”
The presidential election will take place Nov. 5, with Vice President Harris and former President Trump atop the ticket for the Democratic and Republican parties, respectively.
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