On September 10, U.S. District Court Judge Andrew L. Carter refused to put Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., on the New York ballot. Kennedy v Berger, s.d., 1:24cv-03897. He said the state interest in requiring a candidate to list his or her accurate address is important, because otherwise candidates might say they live in that state in order to get more votes from voters in that state. Here is the decision.

He wrote, “While a significant number of voters certainly want to see Kennedy’s name on the ballot, the interest of those voters does not outweigh the broader public interest in administrable elections.”

He did not mention Trump v Anderson, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that said the relationship between the presidency and the people is so important, that there must not be a patchwork in which some states have a presidential candidate on the ballot and other states don’t. However, Kennedy is in a poor position to make this argument, because he is trying to remove his name from the ballot in some states.

The case is not over, because the judge did not reach declaratory judgment. It is not known if Kennedy will pursue the case after the election. He has filed a notice of appeal, but it seems overwhelmingly likely that he will not be on the ballot, and thus New York will be the only jurisdiction in the nation with only Kamala Harris and Donald Trump on the ballot. The New York press has not mentioned this fact. 2024 is the only presidential election in the history of government-printed ballots in New York with only two presidential candidates on the ballot, other than 1956, when the Socialist Labor and Socialist Workers Party were each challenged off the presidential ballot.