The North Carolina Supreme Court ruled Monday that the state must remove Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from the presidential ballot, which will likely delay the mailing of absentee ballots by several weeks.

The court ruled 4-3 in favor of Kennedy, who sued to have his name removed after suspending his candidacy and endorsing former President Donald Trump 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,” the majority opinion, authored by Justice Trey Allen, said. “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.”

Justices Anita Earls and Allison Riggs, the court’s two Democrats, dissented, as did Republican Justice Richard Dietz.

“Here, the whims of one man have been elevated above the constitutional interests of tens of thousands of North Carolina voters who have requested an absentee ballot and seek to exercise their right, under North Carolina law, to cast their ballot as soon as possible,” Riggs wrote in her dissent.

After having already printed millions of ballots with Kennedy’s name on them, local governments will now have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to reprint those ballots without his name.

In her dissent, Earls noted that it is counties who will bear the financial brunt of this decision — not the state.

Absentee ballots were supposed to be sent on Friday to the over 130,000 voters who requested them, but an unsigned ruling from the Court of Appeals in Kennedy’s favor forced the state to halt ballot mailing.

Now, voters will have to wait several more weeks to get their mail-in ballots, reducing the state’s absentee voting period, which was one of the longest in the country.

The state also runs the risk of missing the federal deadline for sending out absentee ballots, which is Sept. 21.

In its ruling, the court’s majority reasoned that having Kennedy on the ballot “could disenfranchise countless voters who mistakenly believe that plaintiff remains a candidate for office.”

The dissenting justices, however, noted that state law gives the State Board of Elections the discretion to decide on late changes to ballots.

“Today, any public aspersions cast on the impartiality, independence, and dignity of our state courts are well-earned,” Riggs wrote. “I despair of this court’s current failure to engage in plain reading of the law and its failure to forcefully defend the rights of the people, particularly when it comes to participation in the political process.”

How did the case get here?

The Supreme Court’s decision is likely the final step in a months-long saga over Kennedy’s candidacy.

After spending months fighting to get on North Carolina’s ballot — and defending his right to do so in court — Kennedy launched a hasty attempt to withdraw his candidacy after partially suspending his campaign last month.

The State Board of Elections initially denied Kennedy’s request to be removed from the ballot. The board’s Democratic majority decided that it would be impractical to do so since over half of the state’s counties had already printed ballots and reprinting them would force the state to miss the Sept. 6 deadline for mailing them out.

Kennedy sued shortly after, arguing that the board was statutorily required to remove him and, by forcing him to remain on the ballot, they were compelling his speech in violation of the Constitution.

A Wake County Superior Court judge sided with the state, finding that they would suffer substantial harm by having to reprint all of the ballots and miss the statutory deadline. However, she granted a 24-hour stay of her decision, allowing Kennedy to appeal just hours before ballots were supposed to go out.

The Court of Appeals sided with Kennedy and ordered the state board not to send out any absentee ballots with his name on them.

The board appealed to the Supreme Court, asking them to reverse the decision and allow them to immediately mail out the already-printed ballots.

“The state — and our taxpayers — may have to spend upwards of $1 million undertaking the numerous tasks it takes to reprint ballots,” the board’s lawyers wrote. “Our state’s elections officials will have to work around the clock and on weekends to reformat, reprint, and reassemble ballots. Absentee voters — including members of our military — will have significantly less time to receive their ballots, fill them out, and return them.”

In court filings, Kennedy’s lawyers said the state should have begun preparing to remove him from the ballot the day he announced he was suspending his campaign, which was Aug. 23.

The majority agreed, writing that “to a large extend, any harm suffered by defendants... is of their own making.”

However, during Kennedy’s announcement, he said he would seek to be removed from the ballot in some states, but remain on the ballot in others. He did not specifically mention his plans for North Carolina.

In his dissent, Dietz notes that, even if the board had begun removing Kennedy’s name the day he announced he was suspending his campaign, they still would likely have missed the Sept. 6 statutory deadline for sending out the ballots.

“In my view, the inability to comply with this legal deadline was a valid basis for the board’s determination of impracticality,” he wrote.

What happens now?

County election workers will now have to recode over 2,000 different ballot styles and disregard the millions of ballots which had already been printed.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Phil Berger Jr. said the previously printed ballots with Kennedy’s name on them should be destroyed.

In an affidavit to the court, State Board of Elections Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell estimated it would take a minimum of 18 to 23 days to create the new ballots.

In the meantime, voters can still request absentee ballots until Oct. 29 at 5 p.m.

©2024 The Charlotte Observer. Visit at charlotteobserver.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.