Republicans would rather rule
The mailing of over 100,000 North Carolina absentee ballots in-state and to armed service members and others residing overseas will be delayed for weeks. (Dare we again use unprecedented?) North Carolina’s state Supreme Court on Monday ruled for RFK Jr. on his demand that his name/party that he fought to include on state ballots now be removed. One hundred county Boards of Elections have already printed roughly 3 million in-person and absentee ballots with Kennedy’s name on them. His delay in withdrawing from the presidential contest to endorse Donald Trump means strapped county boards must pay reprinting costs.
As we noted on Saturday, “2,348 ballot styles will have to be reformatted, reproofed, reprinted, mailings re-prepared by staff, and voting machines recoded in 100 counties.” The cost of Kennedy’s vanity project to North Carolina taxpayers and delay to voters will be considerable.
State law requires absentee ballots to be mailed 60 days ahead of the general election. That was Friday, September 6. The court split 4-3 to circumvent that law , with one Republican justice joining two Democrats in dissent (WRAL):
Democratic Justice Allison Riggs, who is also on the ballot this year as she seeks to retain her seat against state Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin, wrote in dissent Monday that Kennedy’s request wasn’t worth missing what could end up being close to a month of the state’s mail-in voting period.
She referenced the fact that until recently, Kennedy had been fighting to get onto the ballot in North Carolina and said that it’s not clear if he has actually dropped out of the race.
“Elections — the cornerstone of our democracy — are not games or exercises in ego-stroking,” she wrote. “With a disturbing disregard for the impact on millions of North Carolina voters, [Kennedy] seeks to have his cake and eat it, too. Forcing the state to put his name on the ballot, creating for the state costs both practical and legal, he now wants to reprint millions of ballots because he has decided to suspend his campaign without actually ending it or foreclosing the possibility of his election.”
“It amounts to a suspension of state law not mandated by the representatives of the people and grants a favor to one candidate not extended to other candidates, namely, additional time to decide whether to stand for office,” Democratic Justice Anita Earls wrote in her dissent.
State officials have said that will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and could delay the start of mail-in voting for weeks, blowing well past the deadline Friday set by state law. They made those points to the Supreme Court, asking for a reversal of the Court of Appeals order so that they can go ahead and send out the ballots they’ve already printed with Kennedy’s name. They also question Kennedy’s true motives, noting that even as he claims he will face “irreparable harm” if his name appears on the ballot in North Carolina, he’s also fighting separate legal battles to make sure his name does appear on the ballot in other states including New York and Mississippi.
“It’s hard to know what the answer is as far as what Kennedy’s thinking?” said Shawn Donahue, a political science professor at New York’s University of Buffalo of Kennedy’s efforts to get placed on the ballot in New York. In denying RFK Jr. access, a New York court found that the address Kennedy used in his petition was a sham, and that he exhibited (NPR) a pattern of “borrowing addresses from friends and relatives” while actually living in California.
Republican control of the courts both federal and state mean that thumbs are on the scale. The GOP is pulling out every stop and working every lever to gain advantage in this election. GOP operatives display remarkable creativity in devising new ways to monkey-wrench democracy to thwart the will of the people. If only they applied those talents to solving problems Americans face day to day, to improving people’s lives. That they do not, compounded with their rejection of democracy, their embrace of authoritarianism, and promotion of a convicted criminal for president, testifies to the fact that power is their political project, not governing. They’d rather rule.