NC Supreme Court orders RFK Jr's name to be taken off ballots, mail-in voting delayed by weeks

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s name won't be on ballots in North Carolina this year, as the state Supreme Court ruled late Monday night that the state elections board must reprint the millions of ballots it finished printing last month.

The ruling means North Carolina is now expected to blow past the legal deadline to start sending out ballots by several weeks, at the cost of potentially $1 million to taxpayers — arguments that state officials had made against reprinting the ballots, but which the Supreme Court said were worth it to ensure no voter confusion caused by having Kennedy's name on the ballots even though he dropped out of the race last month.

"We acknowledge that expediting the process of printing new ballots will require considerable time and effort by our election officials and significant expense to the state," Justice Trey Allen wrote for the majority. "But that is a price the North Carolina Constitution expects us to incur to protect voters’ fundamental right to vote their conscience and have that vote count."

The Supreme Court's order upholds a Court of Appeals ruling Friday, which itself overturned a trial court judge's ruling on Thursday that had gone against Kennedy.

The state's top elections official said Tuesday that while she disagrees with the ruling, she'll work with state and county officials to make sure it's followed.

"This decision imposes a tremendous hardship on our county boards, at an extremely busy time," North Carolina elections director Karen Brinson Bell wrote in a statement. "But our election officials are professionals, and I have no doubt we will rise to the challenge."

Mail-in voting delayed weeks

The deadline to begin sending out mail-in ballots was last Friday, and elections officials have said the delays of having to reprint ballots — which requires changing more than 2,000 different ballot documents for voters around the state, then running quality-control tests to make sure the new ballots will be accurately counted by the state's voting machines — will take another two or three weeks.

So in the end, the state could end up being nearly a month late in sending out ballots to voters who want to vote by mail. However, the delay in sending those ballots won't change the deadline to request ballots. Anyone who does wish to vote by mail can request a mail-in ballot by Oct. 29 at the latest.

As of Tuesday, more than 146,000 North Carolinians had requested a mail-in ballot, according to state data.

Michael Bitzer, a Catawba College political science professor, told WRAL earlier this month that any issues with mail-in voting this year due to the Kennedy legal battle would probably be more likely to impact Democrats than Republicans. The latest data Tuesday showed that nearly 80% of the mail-in ballot requests so far came from Democratic or unaffiliated voters.

"It wasn't that long ago that registered Republicans actually dominated absentee by mail voting," Bitzer said. "But they have been slowly moving away. And with Trump having called into question that kind of vote method, they've moved even further away from absentee by mail voting, and gone to in-person voting."

The biggest immediate concern for state elections officials is what the delays will mean for active duty military members and their families who are deployed overseas. The federally mandated deadline for all states to get mail-in ballots to those overseas voters is in less than two weeks, on Sept. 21. On Tuesday, the State Board of Elections said the Supreme Court ruling means that the state will likely miss that deadline. They're now getting in touch with military officials to figure out next steps.

"The State Board has begun discussions with the U.S. Department of Defense to seek a potential waiver of that deadline, if ballots are not ready in all counties by that date," the board wrote in a news release Tuesday.

Accusations of a politicized ruling

Kennedy endorsed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump when he dropped out, after polls showed his third-party candidacy had been taking more votes from Trump than from Democrat Kamala Harris. Republican insiders have been behind the push to get Kennedy off the ballot, fearing that if he did appear on the ballot, he could hurt Trump's chances of winning in North Carolina — a state where Trump won by 4.5% of the vote in 2016 but just 1.5% of the vote in 2020.

Also on Monday, a WRAL News Poll showed Harris leading Trump 49% to 46%, with 5% of voters still undecided.

The Supreme Court's 4-3 ruling Monday came down mostly along party lines. Four of the five Republican justice ruled in the majority to require the ballots to be reprinted, over the dissents of both Democratic justices and the other Republican.

The government ethics group Common Cause North Carolina called the ruling an "overtly partisan" decision that will harm voters by cutting into mail-in voting.

"The state’s highest court is simply bowing to what one political party believes will be advantageous to them, rather than making a decision that is best for all voters," Common Cause Executive Director Bob Phillips wrote in a news release. "This ruling hurts voters. And it unduly burdens county election budgets, which are already struggling with limited resources because the state legislature refuses to provide sufficient funding for our elections."

Democratic Justice Allison Riggs, who is also on the ballot this year as she seeks to retain her seat against state Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin, wrote in a dissenting opinion Monday that Kennedy's request wasn't worth missing what could end up being close to a month of the state's mail-in voting period.

She referenced the fact that until recently, Kennedy had been fighting to get onto the ballot in North Carolina. She added that it's still not clear if he has actually dropped out of the race.

"Elections — the cornerstone of our democracy — are not games or exercises in ego-stroking," she wrote. "With a disturbing disregard for the impact on millions of North Carolina voters, [Kennedy] seeks to have his cake and eat it, too. Forcing the state to put his name on the ballot, creating for the state costs both practical and legal, he now wants to reprint millions of ballots because he has decided to suspend his campaign without actually ending it or foreclosing the possibility of his election."

State officials have also questioned Kennedy's true motives, noting that at the same time he was claiming he'd face "irreparable harm" if left on the ballot in North Carolina, he was also fighting separate legal battles to try to get on the ballot in other states including New York and Mississippi.

Kennedy "fails to explain why remaining on the ballot in North Carolina is inherently harmful, but appearing on the ballot in New York and Mississippi poses no such harm," state elections officials had argued to the Supreme Court. The majority ruling didn't address that argument, focusing instead on the potential for confusion in North Carolina if a candidate who had dropped out of the race were listed on the ballot.

"If [Kennedy's] name appears on the ballot, it could disenfranchise countless voters who mistakenly believe [Kennedy] remains a candidate for office," the majority's ruling said.