RFK Jr.’s name remains on the presidential ballot in North Carolina

RALEIGH, NC (AP) — The North Carolina Board of Elections on Thursday refused to remove Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from the state’s presidential race after a majority said it was too late in the process to accept the resignation.

The board’s three Democratic members rejected a request Wednesday by the newly certified We The People Party of North Carolina to remove environmentalist and her running mate Nicole Shanahan from the party’s ballot.

On Friday, Kennedy suspended his campaign and endorsed Republican Donald Trump. He has since sought to remove his name from the ballot in states where presidential elections are expected to be close, including North Carolina. State government officials said they had previously received Kennedy’s signed resignation letter, but because he was the party’s nominee — rather an independent candidate — it was up to We The People to formally seek the resignation.

A majority of state board members thought making the change would be impractical because state law requires the first absentee ballots for the Nov. 5 election to be mailed to requesters beginning Sept. 6. North Carolina is the first state to send out ballots for the fall election, board executive director Karen Brinson Bell said.

As of late Thursday, 67 of the state’s 100 counties had received the printed absentee ticket, Brinson Bell said. The main printing press for counties in the largest state has printed more than 1.7 million ballots. It would take about two weeks to exchange the ballots and process the mail, and the reprinting would cost the counties using this supplier alone several hundred thousand dollars in total, he added.

“When we talk about printing a ballot, we don’t mean … printing a ‘copy’ on a Xerox machine. This is a much more complex and multi-layered process,” Brinson Bell told the board.

The two Republican members of the board who supported Kennedy’s impeachment suggested the state could have more time and flexibility to create new ballots.

“I think we have the time and the means to remove these nominees from the ballot if we use our discretion to do so,” Republican Rep. Kevin Lewis said.

State election officials said We The People’s circumstances didn’t fit neatly into North Carolina law, but there was a rule that allows the board to decide whether it’s practical to reprint ballots.

The board’s chairman, Democrat Alan Hirsch, called the decision not to remove Kennedy “the fairest result under the circumstances.”

Thursday’s action caps a summer in which the administration battled Kennedy’s bid to get on the ballot in the nation’s ninth-largest state. We the People collected signatures from registered voters to become an official party that could then nominate Kennedy as its presidential candidate. Becoming an independent candidate would have required six times more signatures.

The state Democratic Party unsuccessfully fought We The People’s request for certification in government and later in state court. Although the board voted 4-1 last month to make We The People an official party, Hirsch called We The People’s efforts a “fraud” and suggested it was ripe for a legal challenge.

Democrat Siobhan O’Duffy Millen, the only member who voted against certification last month, said the resignation calls for confirmation that “this whole episode has been a farce, and I feel sorry for everyone who has been let down.”