PHOENIX, ARIZONA – AUGUST 23: Former Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gives remarks at the Renaissance Phoenix Downtown Hotel on August 23, 2024 in Phoenix, Arizona.Kennedy announced that he was suspending his presidential campaign and supporting Republican presidential candidate, former U.S. President Donald Trump.(Photo by Rebecca Noble/Getty Images)
The Wisconsin Elections Commission on Thursday asked the state Supreme Court to take up Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s lawsuit seeking to force his name off the presidential ballot in the state, bypassing the Court of Appeals.
Kennedy has been trying for weeks to get his name off the ballot after filing nomination papers to get his name on the ticket but then later dropping out of the race and endorsing former President Donald Trump. More than 8,000 Wisconsin voters signed nomination papers to put Kennedy on the ballot. WEC ruled that state law requires a candidate who files the proper paperwork to get on the ballot to remain on the ballot unless they die.
Kennedy has been trying to get off the ballot in a number of states, succeeding in a few. His effort comes as polling has shown that his support largely draws votes away from Trump.
Earlier this week, a Dane County judge dismissed a lawsuit from Kennedy against the WEC decision and on Wednesday the state’s District 2 Court of Appeals, controlled by a conservative majority, took up the case.
In its request for the Supreme Court to take up the case, WEC said that Kennedy is seeking “extraordinary” relief and the case should move to the state’s highest court because it is “highly time sensitive and hugely consequential for the people of Wisconsin.”
If Kennedy’s effort is successful, the remedy is now complicated because local election clerks have already put hundreds of thousands of absentee ballots into the mail. An effort to print new ballots would be hugely expensive to county clerks across the state. Kennedy’s attorneys have suggested placing white stickers over his name on the ballots — a remedy that is available under state law if a candidate dies.
WEC added that the Supreme Court should accept the case and issue a final resolution, avoiding a temporary decision at the appeals court that will still end up at the Supreme Court level.
“This Court should provide final resolution of this case and avoid an interim appellate court decision that disrupts or casts doubt on that process, or causes clerks to commence an all-hands-on-deck stickering effort,” WEC’s petition states.
When it accepted the case, the appeals court asked a number of questions about the viability of the stickers, including if electronic machines would be able to handle their use. The appeals court had asked for Kennedy’s attorneys to file briefs in the case by Thursday with responses from WEC by Friday.
In its petition to the Supreme Court, WEC calls the proposal of the stickers a “logistical nightmare.”
“Kennedy appears to recognize that it is too late to reprint the ballots, which already are on their way to municipal clerks and absentee voters, including overseas and military voters,” the petition states. “He proposes that all can be solved by requiring local clerks to create and affix stickers to every Wisconsin ballot, but that solution would ignore state law; force clerks to spend tens of thousands of hours creating and affixing stickers; and, as the circuit court put it, create a ‘logistical nightmare’ that could threaten the accuracy of the election results and confidence in the election.”
As part of its request to bypass the appellate court, WEC Technology Director Robert Kehoe stated that more than 340,000 absentee ballots have been sent to voters in the mail. He also said that he is “unaware of any clerk ever placing stickers on ballots in the administration of an election,” adding that the stickers could cause problems with votes being counted.
“The voting tabulation machines tested and certified for use in this state by the Commission are calibrated to read even a light mark so that no vote goes uncounted, and a sticker in the target area of an oval or error could register a double vote,” Kehoe stated. “Even a shadow or wrinkle (for instance, caused by how the sticker is applied) on an optical scan ballot can cause the voting tabulation machine to register a vote.”
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