North Carolina adds RFK Jr.'s party to ballot, but denies Cornel West's party

RALEIGH, N.C. (CN) — North Carolina voters can now register as members of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s We the People party and vote for him in November, the state elections board determined in a 4-1 vote Tuesday, before denying official recognition to Cornel West’s party, citing investigations of fraud.

Acting counsel for the North Carolina Board of Elections said staffers called 250 random voters who signed a petition to approve West’s party, and out of the 49 people they were able to reach, 18 said they had not signed the petition and three voters did not remember signing.

Board members denied West’s party recognition along party lines, the Democrat majority overriding Republican opposition in a 3-2 vote. A representative for West’s party, Justice for All, said it intends to challenge the decision in federal court and may file a lawsuit as early as this week.

Both parties reached the required threshold of signatures to be recognized, but Democrats on the board raised concerns that the parties are simply serving as vehicles to put Kennedy and West on the ballot, instead of as organizations with distinct political character. On July 9, the board also approved the right-leaning Constitution Party, after denying access to all three parties in June.

Individual candidates in North Carolina in 2024 need over 83,000 qualifying voters to fill out a petition request form supporting them to be on the ballot — but can create a new political party if just under 14,000 petitions were signed, and then establish themselves as a candidate for that party.

Siobhan O’Duffy Millen, an elections board member and a Democrat, said Tuesday that she felt North Carolina law was being misapplied because the purpose of a new party should not solely be to place a candidate on the ballot.

Petition gatherers for both parties said in their scripts to voters that their goal in forming a new party was to get Kennedy and West on the ballot, said Millen, who was the sole vote against approving Kennedy’s political party.

The We the People party will now join the Republican, Democratic, Green, No Labels, Libertarian and Constitution parties as political parties for which North Carolina voters can register. West’s status on the ballot will continue to be in limbo as the state House’s inquiry of the Board continues.

West’s Justice for All group raised around 4,000 signatures independently, but many signatures were raised by the super PAC People over Parties, which has refused to comply with the board’s subpoenas, turn over contact information for petition gatherers or share data on the petitions collected.

The board also cited fraud investigations by a county elections board as a reason not to recognize West’s party.

Alan Hirsch, a Democrat and chair of the board, said he had no confidence that signatures turned in by groups outside of West’s party were legitimate, or that the threshold had been met without them.

He said he also believed Kennedy’s party was using subterfuge, but it was a close enough call that it would have to be determined in court, and the board wouldn’t stand in their way.

“Justice for All has submitted well over the number of petitions required, and if we don’t approve them as a new party in the state of North Carolina, based on talking to 49 people, I think that would be injustice for all,” said board member Kevin Lewis, one of the two Republicans in favor of recognizing West’s party.

Both Republican and Democrat board members have largely stuck to policy lines in speaking on the party recognition process, with Republicans in opposition to recognizing the right-leaning Constitution party, which would take votes from GOP nominee Donald Trump, and Democrats against recognizing Kennedy and West’s left-leaning parties, which could divert Democrat votes from President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign.

The board members have been under pressure from the Republican supermajority in the General Assembly to recognize all the parties that have met the signature requirement. The state House Oversight and Reform Committee has opened an inquiry into the board’s approval process; Hirsch will appear as a witness to testify about the board’s previous denials. Representatives have also asked the board to turn over documents related to the petitions.

In a statement Tuesday, Speaker of the House Tim Moore called the board’s latest decision extremely partisan.

“This blatant attempt by Democrats on the NCSBE to bend the rules to insulate their own party’s nominee perfectly illustrates the need for a more balanced Board of Elections," he said.

In North Carolina, Republicans control both chambers of the General Assembly and have a majority in the state Supreme Court. Board of Elections members are appointed by the governor, currently Democratic Governor Roy Cooper, and the board has a democratic majority by one member.

Disputes over the validity of political parties isn’t new in North Carolina. The Green party took the state board to court in 2022 after it was denied recognition, and the Democratic party was forced to pay its legal fees after the party intervened to prevent them from getting ballot access.

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