By Lynn Bonner

NC Newsline

A Wake County judge turned back Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s attempt to be removed from North Carolina ballots, ruling from the bench Thursday that Kennedy will suffer minimal harm, while harm to the state Board of Elections would be substantial.

Last Thursday, the state Board of Elections voted 3-2 to keep Kennedy’s name on the ballot, citing the cost to reprint ballots and the Sept. 6 deadline for mailing the first absentee ballots to people who requested them. Kennedy sued the next day to have his name taken off.

Wake Superior Court Judge Rebecca Holt said Kennedy will suffer no practical, personal, or financial harm from having his name on the ballot, while the state Board of Elections would have to reprint ballots at “considerable cost and effort” and would likely miss the ballot-mailing deadline.

She did, however, grant Kennedy a 24-hour stay. Kennedy’s lawyer Phil Strach, said he and his client plan to take the case to the state Court of Appeals.

That leaves Friday’s planned mailing of absentee ballots uncertain.

The State Board told county boards in an email after Thursday’s court hearing to hold off mailing absentee ballots Friday morning, unless the State Board tells them otherwise.

Ballots will need to go out at the end of the 24-hour period, unless the Court of Appeals orders otherwise, Paul Cox, one of the state Board’s lawyers wrote in an email to county election directors. It may be that ballots have to go out tomorrow afternoon, because that’s the deadline in state law. Or, it may be that the Court of Appeals orders a further delay, Cox wrote. “Stay tuned.”

Kennedy as a presidential candidate in North Carolina is a political drama that has dragged on for months. For most of that time, he was fighting to get on the ballot.

But on Aug. 23, he announced he wanted to withdraw his name in 10 battleground states so as not to draw votes from former President Donald Trump, whom he endorsed. He did not name the states where he wanted off the ballot and encouraged people in noncompetitive states to vote for him.

North Carolina is considered a battleground state and the major party candidates are in a heated contest for the state’s 16 Electoral College votes.

Mary Carla Babb of the state Attorney General’s office said the state Board’s decision to keep Kennedy on the ballot was its only legal option. State law gives the Board the authority to consider whether it was practical to remove Kennedy so close to the mailing deadline and after printing had already started.

Stopping and resetting ballots would cost the state and counties “untold amounts of money” and delay the start of voting by at least two weeks, state attorneys wrote in their brief.

“Elections are not a game,” Babb said. “States are not obligated to honor the whims of candidates for public office.”

She noted that Kennedy is trying to get off the ballot in some states but is fighting to get on the New York ballot.

Strach, Kennedy’s lawyer, said the candidate’s request to withdraw met a Sept. 6 deadline. If counties need to have millions of ballots reprinted, it’s because the Board of Elections told them after Aug. 23 to plow ahead with printing even though they knew Kennedy wanted to drop out.

“They could have called a time-out on printing,” he said.

Strach is best known as one of the leading lawyers representing legislative Republicans in election cases.

At last Thursday’s Board meeting, Director Karen Brinson Bell told members that ballot printing could not stop based on a press conference.

Some days after the press conference, the Kennedy campaign asked how it could remove his name, and Kennedy sent a letter asking to be removed.

The state Board maintained that the We the People party, which nominated Kennedy, had to ask for his name to be removed. The Board received the party’s request last Wednesday, the day before its meeting.

Strach argued that there was no legal requirement for the We the People party to ask to remove Kennedy.

Kennedy created We the People to achieve ballot access in North Carolina and a handful of other states.

It’s easier to become certified as a political party in North Carolina than it is to secure a spot on the ballot as an independent candidate running statewide because fewer petition signatures are required.

The two Republican members of the Board of Elections were eager to certify We the People, while the Board’s three Democrats were more reluctant. Republicans accused Democrats of dragging their feet. Last Thursday, it was Republicans arguing that Kennedy should be allowed to come off the ballot and Democrats voting to keep him on.

After the Board certified We the People in a 4-1 vote, the Democratic Party tried to reverse the decision by suing the Board of Elections. A Wake Superior Court judge ruled for the Board of Elections and We the People, allowing Kennedy to stay on the ballot.

Kennedy has had trouble dropping out in at least two other battleground states. A Michigan judge on Monday rejected Kennedy’s attempt to withdraw his name in that state, the Associated Press reported. Last week, the Wisconsin Elections Commission rejected Kennedy’s request to be removed from the ballot there.

Investigative Reporter Lynn Bonner covers the state legislature and politics, as well as elections, the state budget, public and mental health, safety net programs and issues of racial equality.