Nevada Democrats sue to keep RFK Jr., Green Party off November ballot

The Nevada Democratic Party has launched two separate legal maneuvers to disqualify independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Green Party ticket from ballot access in the November election.

While both the Biden camp and former President Trump have criticized Kennedy, Democrats in particular still appear sore eight years after figures showed votes for Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein in three swing states accounted for more than Hillary Clinton’s losing margin.

Earlier this week, the Nevada secretary of state’s office announced the Green Party had collected enough signatures to make the ballot.

Just as in 2016, Stein was named their nominee, after the party nominated self-described "ecosocialist" Howie Hawkins III in 2020.

However, the Nevada Democratic Party has since filed a lawsuit challenging the signatures, reportedly claiming too many were invalid to meet the approximate-10,000 threshold cited this week by Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar. 

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Aguilar said the Green Party had submitted 15,000 valid signatures, while the party claimed to have submitted nearly 30,000 overall, according to the Nevada Independent.

The Nevada Democrats were able to review a sampling of signatures following a records request, which then led to the lawsuit.

The party did not respond to multiple attempts by Fox News Digital to procure comment, but executive director Hillary Barnett said in a statement to the Reno Gazette-Journal that the party "filed this challenge to preserve our rights to inspect the petitions consistent with Nevada state law."

In a statement to Fox News Digital, the Green Party of the United States called the Democrats' lawsuit "frivolous" and intended to divert attention away from third-party support in this cycle.

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"[T]here will be a choice in November that stands against war, genocide and climate catastrophe and for national health care, workers' rights and the funding of an eco-socialist Green New Deal to address the current climate crisis," the statement read.

"Their Party has abandoned working people, so the only way the Democrats think they can win the White House is by blocking our candidate from the ballot. This is what voter suppression looks like."

In regard to Kennedy, Nevada Democrats said the scion of one of its party’s most popular families is ineligible to be on the ballot because he is registered with a disparate group of political parties in various states.

Kennedy, who is a registered Democrat in New York, is running on several lines, including his self-founded We The People Party in two states and the Reform Party in Florida.

The Democrats reportedly argued state law mandates Kennedy be registered without political party affiliation to run as an Independent in the state.

In a statement obtained by the Nevada Independent, Barnett said Nevada has a reasonable process for attaining ballot access and that Kennedy has not met its requirements.

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While Kennedy’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment, his campaign did previously sue Aguilar’s office claiming a policy requiring a third-party candidate name a running mate before gathering petition signatures is unconstitutional.

Kennedy’s campaign claimed the law violates the First and 14th Amendments, and campaign counsel Paul Rossi told The Associated Press that "the court must prohibit what was either rank incompetence or partisan political gamesmanship by the secretary from invalidating petition signatures afforded the highest First Amendment protection by the United States Supreme Court."

In a statement responding to the lawsuit, Aguilar said Nevada has long respected third-party candidates running for office and that "each of those candidates managed to attain ballot access by following the law."