Last month, the Montana Democratic Party filed a state court lawsuit to remove the Green Party nominee for U.S. Senate from the ballot. See this story. The Montana Green Party is ballot-qualified. In Montana, all qualified parties nominate by primary. The winner of the Green Party primary withdrew after the election. State law gave the Green Party the right to replace him with someone else. The party chose Robert Bard, who had lost the Green Party primary. The Democrats say Bard is ineligible because the Green Party didn’t vet him, but there is no such requirement in the law.

Montana state courts removed the Green Party from the ballot in both 2018 and 2020, after the Democratic Party challenged the party’s petition. Later the law that the Democrats had used the invalidate the petition was itself invalidated by the Ninth Circuit, so the Green Party got back on the ballot due to the Ninth Circuit decision.

On September 9, the North Carolina Supreme Court voted 4-3 to allow Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to withdraw his name from the ballot. In North Carolina he was the nominee of the We the People Party. The party supported his desire to withdraw. It is still a ballot-qualified party with one legislative nominee and one nominee for county office. But after the election it will go off the ballot, because obviously there is no chance it will poll as much as 2% of the vote for either President or Governor. The alternate method for staying on the ballot won’t work either since it no longer has a presidential nominee. The alternate method requires being on the ballot for its presidential nominee in at least 35 states.

The case is Kennedy v North Carolina State Board of Elections, 235P24.

Here is a registration link for this webinar to be hosted at 2PM Eastern Time on Tuesday, September 17, 2024, by the Moritz College of Law at The Ohio State University.