Robert F. Kennedy Jr. remains on NC ballot

UPDATE: As of Wednesday evening, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s We The People Party has formally requested the withdrawal of Kennedy’s nomination in the race for president on the NC ballot. The N.C. State Board of Elections will hold a remote meeting at 11:30 a.m. Thursday to consider the request.

RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is his own party’s nominee for president. But last Friday Kennedy said he and the We the People Party were withdrawing from the race, and endorsing former president Donald Trump. But a verbal withdrawal may have no impact on the ballots in multiple swing states including North Carolina.

As of Wednesday, there had been no official notice of withdrawal to the N.C. State Board of Elections. A week from Friday, absentee ballots will be mailed out to registered voters.

“I think the odds are very high that he’s going to be on the ballot. That state board has not received anything saying that he shouldn’t be, so I think he’s probably going to be on the ballot and I think he’s probably going to get about as many votes as he would have otherwise,” said Professor Chris Cooper, Director of the Haire Institute for Public Policy at Western Carolina University.

According to the NCSBE, more than half of North Carolina’s counties have already printed their ballots. If We the People withdraws Kennedy’s nomination, the state board would have to consider whether it is practical to remove his name from the ballots and reprint them.

Prof. Cooper said that third-party voters vote for third-party candidates for a reason, and that Donald Trump likely won’t get much of a bump from Kennedy’s withdrawal.

“They motivate people to show up who wouldn’t have otherwise shown up. The kind of people who feel like the two-party system is not for them. So, I have a feeling for the vast majority of these RFK voters, they may just stay on the couch. As opposed to showing up and voting for Donald Trump, if RFK Junior is off the ballot,” said Cooper.

Kennedy originally tried to get enough signatures to get on the NC ballot as an independent. When he failed to do that he went a different route by creating a new party which has a different threshold of necessary signatures.

Cooper said he saw red flags during Kennedy’s interview with CBS 17’s Russ Bowen last January. Kennedy and his team expressed confusion as to just how many signatures he actually needed.

“He was clearly surprised by your question, Russ. He clearly didn’t understand what it took to get on the ballot as an independent candidate. That was an early warning sign that, you know, not only that was he running a campaign that was unlikely to win, but he didn’t even really understand the process himself,” Cooper said

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