MADISON, Wis. (CN) — The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled unanimously Friday to keep Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name on the ballot for the presidential election in November.
The high court upheld a lower court’s finding that changing the ballot now would irreparably harm voters in November. The election process will continue on schedule.
“The challenger must demonstrate that the circuit court did not examine the relevant facts, apply a proper standard of law, or reach a conclusion that a reasonable judge could reach by applying a demonstrated rational process. We conclude that he has failed to satisfy this burden,” the court wrote in an unsigned opinion.
Kennedy has been in a legal tennis match with the Wisconsin Elections Commission since August to have his name removed from the state ballot or covered with a sticker, despite over 400,000 absentee ballots and counting already in the hands of voters. The candidate attempted to withdraw in August, filing for a temporary injunction which the lower court denied.
Wisconsin is one of several battleground states in which Kennedy is pushing to get out of the race for president. He succeeded in North Carolina, with the high court there ordering ballots be reprinted without his name. Though he is throwing a ton of resources at getting off the ballot in purple states, he says he will continue asking for support in partisan states — which may have hurt his chances in this appeal.
“Kennedy had simultaneously claimed harm in some states from not being removed from the ballot and harm in other states from not being placed on the ballot. On the other side of the balance, the circuit court noted the harm that would be inflicted on the public if the requested injunction were granted,” the high court wrote.
In 2020, President Biden won Wisconsin by just 20,000 votes. The Republican Party fears Kennedy’s name on the ballot in purple states could act as a spoiler, drawing votes away from former president and GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump. Kennedy endorsed Trump in August just after attempting to withdraw from the race in Wisconsin.
Nomination papers for independent candidates had to be submitted on Aug. 8, while party affiliates had until Sept. 3 to nominate a candidate. The deadlines give the election commission enough time to certify the signatures required to be nominated independent from a major party.
Kennedy filed his nomination papers two days before the deadline and attempted to withdraw two weeks later. Wisconsin law does include an exception for nominees to withdraw from the running after the deadline has passed — unfortunately for Kennedy, the exception is death.
State statute 8.35 mandates that a candidate may only withdraw from the ballot in the case of their death. Further, only if the candidate dies after ballots have been printed may stickers must be placed over their name on each ballot. The Supreme Court cited this statute in its opinion, and ultimately upheld the lower court’s finding that Kennedy failed to provide evidence to support his constitutional claims.
Besides the legal hurtle, the election commission also had a logistical problem with Kennedy’s sticker solution: It hasn’t been tested on the state’s voting machines, and Wisconsin law requires a public testing of electronic voting machines not more than 10 days before the election. That means if the stickers didn’t work in the machine, there would be no time to fix it, resulting in a hand count across the state.
Like the Supreme Court, the lower court found Kennedy was not able to provide sufficient evidence that he would be irreparably harmed, or that the public wouldn’t.