Out of fear that she will split the vote, Nevada Democrats have removed Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein from the state ballot for November’s election, which other states have also been attempting while forcing independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to stay on the ballots despite trying to remove himself.
On Friday, Sept. 6, the Supreme Court of Nevada ruled that the Nevada Green Party and its candidate, Jill Stein, would be taken off the state’s ballot, a decision made despite party petitioners gaining over 29,500 signatures to get Stein on, which is almost three times the minimum requirement. The controversial 5-2 ruling means over 2 million voters in the state will only have three different choices on the ballot in November: the Democratic Party ticket, the Republican Party ticket; and the Libertarian Party ticket.
The ruling wasn’t based on whether or not the petition signatures were valid but on procedural discrepancies. The five judges who voted to remove Stein based that decision on the fact that the Green Party failed to circulate the necessary circulator affidavit while the signatures were collected. The party was supposed to use the circular affidavit to apply for “minor party ballot access” and instead used one for “initiative and referendum petitions,” leading the court to determine that they “did not substantially comply” with state requirements and that the “signatures must be invalidated.”
Stein called the court ruling a “slap in the face to democracy… the rule of law…” and “millions of voters.” The decision is the latest in the ongoing rush by Democrats to clear the way for Vice President Kamala Harris. Like Stein, independent candidate Cornel West has also been kicked off ballots in several states, the latest of which was Georgia.
Meanwhile, Kennedy endorsed former President Donald Trump last month after officially suspending his independent campaign and announced a plan to remove himself only from swing state ballots, encouraging his supporters to vote for Trump in those states. When Kennedy tried to remove himself from the ballots, though, several states blocked him from doing so, forcing the former Democrat to pivot and change plans and to instead instruct all of his supporters to vote for Trump in November.
