RFK Jr. removes himself from four battleground ballots

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is fighting to get his name off the presidential ballot in key battleground states — an effort to draw any remaining support he had to former President Donald Trump.

When Kennedy suspended his campaign and backed Trump on Aug. 23, his once-strong position as the biggest spoiler in decades had withered greatly during his 10-month campaign as an independent presidential candidate. Kennedy has now successfully removed his name from four battleground states — Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada — where moving even a fraction of Kennedy’s former supporters to Trump could be decisive. Wisconsin’s Supreme Court ruled on Friday that Kennedy would remain on the ballot there in November.

But the effort to withdraw from state ballots is an unprecedented move for any independent or minor party candidate — and it's unclear exactly how successful he will be in the remaining swing states by the start of early and absentee voting.

“This has never happened before,” said Richard Winger, a ballot access expert who also runs the Ballot Access News website. “He's taken his name off some states that are not swing states. It's very mysterious. I don't know why.”

Kennedy’s withdrawal has gotten litigious in three states, of which only one case has been concluded in North Carolina.

The Tar Heel state had already begun printing ballots when Kennedy dropped out of the race. The former candidate sued and ultimately won his case to remove his name after an appeal, but the result forced the swing state to bear the cost of reprinting ballots and delayed their distribution to absentee and overseas military voters.

“This decision imposes a tremendous hardship on our county boards, at an extremely busy time,” said Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the State Board of Elections, in a statement. “But our election officials are professionals, and I have no doubt we will rise to the challenge.”

The consequences of the legal spat is a cause for concern from some third-party groups, which were vocally opposed to Kennedy's candidacy on the grounds he could throw the election to Trump.

“At Trump and MAGA’s direction, RFK Jr. is manufacturing scenarios that throw the ballot counting process of multiple states into disarray,” said Britt Jacovich, a spokesperson for MoveOn, in a statement. “If successful, Trump will use this as a pretense to say that this election was rigged and once again attempt to defy the will of the people. Let’s call this what it is: a direct attack on democracy."

Kennedy did not respond to questions about his ongoing ballot access cases when asked on Capitol Hill earlier this week.

The disruptions caused by removing his name could lead to further trust concerns about the U.S. election system, which is already under increased scrutiny.

Kennedy’s latest legal appeals are threatening to upend election timelines in Wisconsin and Michigan as well.

“This election will be decided on the margins, and any effort to damage our electoral process is an attack on our entire democracy,” Jacovich said in another statement.

Kennedy has become a vocal surrogate for the Trump campaign. He plans to campaign with former Rep. Tulsi-Gabbard, the ex-Democrat who has also now thrown her backing to Trump, this weekend in Michigan.

“No matter what state you live in, you should be voting for Donald Trump,” Kennedy said in a video clip shared online in early September. “That’s the only way that we can get me and everything I stand for into Washington, DC.”

Vice President Kamala Harris has a narrow lead over Trump in these two blue wall states, according to recent statewide polls. Joe Biden won them collectively in 2020 with fewer than 200,000 votes, and Trump with about 35,000 in 2016.

And Kennedy still has pull as a candidate, garnering about 2 percent support in a recent national poll from NBC News . Both Trump and Harris must also navigate the small shares of support held by Libertarian Party nominee Chase Oliver, who’s on the ballot in every swing state; Green Party nominee Jill Stein and independent Cornel West, who are both on the ballot in a handful of swing states.

The close margins between Trump and Harris are also consistent with the swing states where Kennedy has successfully removed his name from the ballot. In Georgia, he removed his name after two letters from his lawyers and in Arizona by quickly withdrawing his petition. In Pennsylvania, Kennedy opted not to fight a challenge to his petition and in Nevada, a settlement in a lawsuit filed by local Democrats muted the issue.

There was a single case where Kennedy was fighting to keep his name on the ballot in New York, but the Supreme Court rejected his final appeal on Friday.

“Kennedy continues to embarrass himself with desperate and contradictory legal arguments in state after state, even trying to delay millions of ballots being printed and cast, all to fulfill his corrupt bargain with Trump,” said Pete Kavanaugh, head of Clear Choice PAC, which initially filed the challenge to Kennedy’s New York paperwork.

Kennedy remains on the ballot in about 30 states.