MITCHELL SCHMIDT
The state Supreme Court ruled Friday that Robert F. Kennedy's name will stay on Wisconsin's presidential election ballot, dealing a significant blow to the former independent presidential candidate's effort to scrub his name from the battleground state's November ballot.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court dismissed Kennedy's lawsuit, which he filed in August against the Wisconsin Elections Commission in an effort to remove his name from the ballot or require clerks to place a sticker on each ballot to cover it up.
Kennedy, who has suspended his campaign and endorsed former President Donald Trump, has chosen to leave his name on the ballot in other states where votes cast for him are unlikely to change the outcome of the election.
The state's highest court last week agreed to bypass Wisconsin's appellate court and take up the case directly, noting plans to issue a decision "as expeditiously as possible" due to strict state and federal deadlines that Wisconsin's more than 1,800 local clerks must follow to mail absentee ballots out to voters. More than 425,000 absentee ballots had already been mailed or prepared to be mailed as of Thursday, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission. More than 42,000 absentee ballots have already been returned to local clerks.
The push to remove Kennedy from the ballot comes after polling by the Marquette Law School found more Republicans than Democrats were considering voting for Kennedy — an outcome that could sink Trump's hopes in the battleground state given Wisconsin's notoriously close statewide elections.
President Joe Biden defeated Trump in Wisconsin in 2020 by fewer than 21,000 votes, while Trump won the state by less than 23,000 votes in 2016 — the same year Green Party candidate Jill Stein secured more than 31,000 votes.
Dane County Circuit Judge Stephen Ehlke ruled last week that Kennedy's request to be removed from the ballot was simply too late. Party-affiliated candidates had until 5 p.m. Sept. 3 to certify their presidential nominee, while independent candidates like Kennedy only had until Aug. 6, the deadline to file nomination papers, to withdraw.
Attorneys for Kennedy argued in court filings the state's deadlines "hamstring independent candidates, while giving Democrats and Republicans a greater opportunity to disassociate from a candidate or for a candidate to dissociate from the campaign."
Ehlke also sided with the election commission's reading of state law that, once a candidate files nomination papers and a declaration of candidacy, the only way to be removed from the ballot is to die.
Wisconsin statute states, "Any person who files nomination papers and qualifies to appear on the ballot may not decline nomination. The name of that person shall appear upon the ballot except in case of death of the person."
"Kennedy is not asking for much," Kennedy's attorney wrote in court filings. "He’s seeking equal treatment under the law — that’s it. That equal treatment cannot be washed away by simply ignoring his rights or adopting a 'once you declare, you’re forever there' reading of the statute."
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