Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to put his name back on New York’s presidential ballot after a lower court disqualified him.
Kennedy, an independent, announced on Aug. 23 that he was suspending his campaign and endorsing former President Donald Trump, a Republican.
Although he has tried to remove his name from swing state ballots since Aug. 23, Kennedy has left his name on the ballot in some other states. He said he is doing this in a longshot bid to secure the presidency in a possible so-called contingent election that would put the presidency in the hands of the U.S. House of Representatives in the event of an electoral college deadlock.
“If you do vote for me, and neither of the candidates wins 270 electoral votes, which is quite possible—in fact, today our polling shows them tying at 269-269—I could conceivably still end up in the White House in a contingent election,” Kennedy has said.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor directed New York state officials to file a response to the application by 4 p.m. on Sept. 25.
The application states that Kennedy’s campaign gathered more than the required number of signatures from New York voters. The New York State Board of Elections certified more than 100,000 signatures as valid and ordered his name placed on the ballot.
On Aug. 12, Judge Christina Ryba of the New York Supreme Court found Kennedy had falsely claimed he had a New York residence despite living in California. The rented room in Katonah, New York, that he said was his residence wasn’t a “bona fide and legitimate residence, but merely a ‘sham’ address that he assumed for the purpose of maintaining his voter registration” and advancing his candidacy, Ryba wrote.
On Sept. 10, the New York Court of Appeals affirmed the ruling and the next day the elections board certified the general election ballot without Kennedy’s name on it.
On Sept. 18, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit denied the campaign’s motion to reverse the ruling in a one-sentence order.
Kennedy argues in the new application that U.S. Supreme Court precedent is on his side.
Ohio blocked independent presidential candidate John Anderson from that state’s ballot in 1980 after he gathered the required number of signatures from Ohio voters. State officials disqualified him for missing a filing deadline.
In Anderson v. Celebrezze, the U.S. Supreme Court “would have none of it, holding that Ohio’s interests in its filing deadline did not outweigh the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights at stake.”
The precedent “indisputably controls this case” and “is in all material respects indistinguishable,” the application states.
The U.S. Supreme Court “has long recognized the constitutional ‘right of voters to associate and to have candidates of their choice placed on the ballot.’”
“Absent immediate, emergency relief, over 100,000 New York voters who signed the invalidated Kennedy petition will be irrevocably deprived of that right,” the application states.
The Epoch Times reached out for comment to New York Solicitor General Barbara Underwood on Kennedy’s application and did not receive a reply by publication time.
The ruling left intact a Nevada Supreme Court decision from Sept. 6 removing the party’s candidates—including presidential candidate Jill Stein—because they used the wrong form when gathering ballot-access signatures from the public.
