North Carolina rules RFK Jr.’s name must be removed just before mail-in ballots sent

A North Carolina court ruled Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 's name must be taken off the state’s ballot this fall, right before mail-in ballots were due to be sent out.

The North Carolina Court of Appeals ordered state election officials to “hold your out-going absentee ballots” Friday as the battleground state geared up to send the requested forms to more than 130,000 North Carolinian voters. The court then decided to remove Kennedy's name from the ballot.

The ruling will likely please former President Donald Trump, whom Kennedy recently endorsed. The former independent presidential candidate vowed to take his name off the ballot in swing states in order to assist Trump. The state initially resisted before an appeals court decided against keeping his name on the ballot.

If Kennedy's voters defect to Trump's campaign in the state, the ruling could prove to be the difference in the swing state that has grown increasingly close since Vice President Kamala Harris's nomination as the Democratic presidential candidate.

The decision in favor of Kennedy's request Friday overturned Wake County Superior Court Judge Rebecca Holt’s ruling the previous day. Holt denied Kennedy’s request to be removed from the ballot Thursday, saying the state would be harmed by the cost of reprinting ballots without his name on them.

Kennedy’s legal team argued otherwise.

“The ensuing confusion from that — from individual voters going into the booth and looking at the ballot ... outweighs any administrative inconvenience or concern that the state board has,” Kennedy’s lawyer, Phil Strach, said Thursday.

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Kennedy originally brought the lawsuit against North Carolina after the State Board of Elections’s Democratic majority blocked his request to withdraw his candidacy in the swing state.

North Carolina's 16 electoral votes are considered to be a critical part of the pathway to the presidency. The latest polling shows former President Donald Trump in a dead heat with Vice President Kamala Harris to win North Carolina.