Our Opinion: Let third-party hopefuls compete in NC elections

Voters who support Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West and Randall Terry may not find their chosen candidates’ names on the ballot if the N.C. State Board of Elections’ Democratic majority has its way.

In a 3-2 vote last week, the elections board denied recognition to Kennedy’s We the People Party, West’s Justice For All Party and the Constitution Party, which picked Terry as its nominee. The board says it needs to investigate the groups’ petition signatures before approving ballot access, but Republicans smell a rat. Consigning West and RFK Jr. to the write-in line could limit the votes these minor-party progressives siphon away from President Joe Biden.

“Today, the Democrat-controlled North Carolina Board of Elections has done Joe Biden’s bidding, willfully ignored North Carolina law and betrayed the public trust of North Carolinians by voting not to qualify Cornel West or Robert Kennedy Jr. for the presidential ballot,” Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley said in a fiery prepared statement, calling the move “one more example of Democrats fracturing trust in America’s democratic institutions and flouting the electoral process in their increasingly desperate attempts to hold onto political power.”

Steven Cheung, communications director for former President Donald Trump’s campaign, compared the vote to short-lived efforts to remove the presumptive GOP nominee from the ballot in Colorado. In March, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled that state governments can’t enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment against candidates for federal office.

“Throughout this election, we have seen Democrats try to engage in blatant election interference because they know they have a flawed candidate in Crooked Joe Biden,” Cheung said. “We have seen it with the weaponization of the justice system in an effort to take President Trump off the campaign trail and even off the ballot, depriving Americans (of) their constitutional right to vote for their candidate of choice. Now Democrats in North Carolina are doing the same to game the system to help Biden.”

Trump held a six-point lead in FiveThirtyEight.com ’s average of North Carolina presidential polls Thursday, receiving 44.5% support to Biden’s 38.5%. The polling average pegs Kennedy at 8.2% in the Tar Heel State. Shifting that support into Biden’s column could change the campaign’s trajectory. To box out Trump, consolidate voters behind a singular alternative.

If Democratic operatives are angling for the outcome most favorable to Biden, aren’t Republican politicians only crying foul because a crowded ballot could benefit Trump? Perhaps neither side has pure motives or clean hands. That’s more or less inevitable when legislators exclusively representing the major-party duopoly write the laws on ballot access and their handpicked political appointees on the elections board apply them.

“If independent voters were not prohibited by statute from being appointed to the N.C. Board of Elections, this decision would likely have been different,” said Mike Ross, the Libertarian Party candidate for governor. “If you agree that it is patently unfair to deny over a third of all voters any say in the administration of election law, then you see how important it is that we vote out the status quo.”

More than 2.8 million North Carolinians are registered as unaffiliated voters, a figure that dwarfs the state’s 2.4 million Democrats and 2.26 million Republicans. Voter registration statistics also show 49,863 Libertarians, 2,463 Green Party members and 13,454 people claiming No Labels affiliation.

The Times doesn’t endorse candidates or political parties. On this page, we’ve consistently sided with independent and third-party candidates in their bids for a place on the ballot regardless of which major party could be helped or harmed.

“Citizens should be able to run for public office whether or not they align themselves with Democrats or Republicans,” we wrote in an editorial championing the N.C. Elections Freedom Act, which sought to lower ballot access hurdles by establishing an unaffiliated primary. “Voters deserve choice and competition.”

Democratic state Rep. Ken Goodman’s 2017 bill died on the vine. After this week’s chicanery, GOP legislative leaders who spurned such reforms might be open to a change of heart.

The State Board of Elections has ample time to review the prospective parties’ petitions and have Kennedy, West and Terry listed on your general election ballot. We urge the board to reverse course and give citizens the full range of choices to which they’re entitled this November.

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