Kennedy, who has a history of anti-LGBTQ viewpoints, is depicted in this meme from social media as a bat-wielding Trump ally.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has filed a lawsuit against the North Carolina State Board of Elections after the board voted 3-2 to reject Kennedy’s request to remove his name off the state’s ballots.
This follows a tumultuous court battle in North Carolina from the We The People Party — the new political party which selected Kennedy as its nominee. The party went up and won against the North Carolina Democratic Party to get on the ballot and now, the party’s candidate seeks to remove it.
Kennedy announced last month he would suspend his campaign, going on to endorse former president Donald Trump for the 2024 election. Kennedy said as a part of suspending his campaign, he wanted to remove his name from the ballots in swing states, but keep it on the ballots in states with Democratic or Republican strongholds.
He’s only been successful in removing his name from the Arizona and Pennsylvania ballot, and Nevada, Michigan and Wisconsin have already told Kennedy it’s too late to take his name off.
In North Carolina, the three officials who voted to reject Kennedy’s request said it would be difficult to reprint the over 1.7 million ballots already made. Kennedy’s lawyers argue the deadline to be removed from the ballot in North Carolina has historically been around the time when absentee ballots are sent out to overseas residents 60 days before the election, which this year is on Sept. 6.
“At its core, NCSBE’s ‘practicality’ test appears rooted in the cost of printing new ballots without Kennedy on them, but NCSBE concedes it was aware of at least Kennedy’s desire to remove himself from the ballot since August 23, 2024,” the lawsuit added. “Nevertheless, NCSBE directed its County Boards of Election to continue printing ballots with Kennedy on them. Thus, to the extent NCSBE claims it is ‘impractical’ to remove him from the ballot, it is an issue of NCSBE’s own making.”
NCSBE Associate General Counsel Adam Steele confirmed to the Carolina Journal that normally, candidates have until the 60 day mark to remove their name. However, because Kennedy is a presidential candidate, the rules he has to follow are under a different statute: NC General Statute 163-209.
This statute says presidential candidates have until the first Friday in August to plead their cases to the state board, and Kennedy made his announcement on Aug. 23.
Additional statutes and rules that the board cited at the meeting are General Statute 163-165.3C, which addresses late changes in ballots, and then Rule 08 NCAC 06b.0104, which states if there’s a late change in a ballot that comes before the start of the absentee voting period, the board must take a vote if it makes sense to reprint the ballots.
Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell told the board 80 out of 93 counties are already producing absentee ballots and 67 had or would receive their absentee by-mail ballots by the end of the day of the meeting. The cost of having to reprint all of those ballots: a high, six-figure range’s worth of taxpayer dollars.
Kennedy, who was previously registered as a Democrat and created his own independent “We the People” party to run for the White House, was reportedly rejected by Democrats for the possibilty of any sort of potential cabinet position because of his often bizarre and extremist viewpoints, which prompted him to toss hiss support behind Trump. Many individuals in both the Republican and Democratic parties have found such statements as these, cited by GLAAD, as questionable:
• False claims that COVID-19 was “ethnically targeted” to attack certain ethnic groups while sparing Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people, a conspiracy theory that drew accusations of antisemitism and racism.
• Told Joe Rogan that Wi-Fi causes cancer and “leaky brain.”
• Falsely linked vaccines to various medical conditions, including the scientifically discredited belief that vaccines for children cause autism. Kennedy advertised misleading information about vaccine ingredients and circulated retracted studies linking vaccines to various medical conditions.
• At an anti-vaccine rally in Washington, D.C., compared vaccination records to the persecution of Jews by the Nazis. He said, “Even in Hitler Germany [sic], you could, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland. You could hide in an attic, like Anne Frank did… I visited, in 1962, East Germany with my father and met people who had climbed the wall and escaped, so it was possible. Many died, true, but it was possible.” In fact, Frank and some 6 million other Jews were murdered by Nazis. Frank and her family hid in an attic in the Netherlands, not Germany, before she was caught and was sent to a concentration camp, where she died.
• Told Louisiana lawmakers in 2021 that the coronavirus vaccine was the “deadliest vaccine ever made.”
• His nonprofit organization Children’s Health Defense was removed from Facebook and Instagram for repeatedly violating guidelines by spreading medical misinformation.
• Claimed that chemicals in our water are causing kids to be transgender. He told anti-trans conspiracy theorist Jordan Peterson that kids are “swimming through a soup of toxic chemicals,” including atrazine, a common herbicide, and that, “A lot of the problems we see in kids, and particularly boys, it’s probably underappreciated that how much of that is coming from chemical exposures, including a lot of the sexual dysphoria that we’re seeing.” There is no evidence to indicate that the herbicide causes gender dysphoria in humans. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says, “Most people are not exposed to atrazine on a regular basis.”
• Suggested that poppers, not HIV, caused AIDS and that, “But for [Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony] Fauci, it was really important to call it a virus because that made it an infectious disease, and it allowed him to take control of it.”
• Falsely and repeatedly endorsed the idea that mass shootings have increased because of heightened use of antidepressants.
At press time, it remains unlikely Kennedy’s name will be removed from any further ballots. The Kennedy family released the following statement in reference to RFK Jr.’s endorsement od Donald Trump:
“We want an America filled with hope and bound together by a shared vision of a brighter future, a future defined by individual freedom, economic promise and national pride,” said a statement signed by the former independent presidential candidate’s following siblings: Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Courtney Kennedy, Kerry Kennedy, Chris Kennedy and Rory Kennedy. Joe Kennedy III, a grandson of Robert F. Kennedy, shared his response on Twitter/X, posting that the Kennedy family response was “well said.”
“We believe in Harris and Walz,” the statement concluded. “Our brother Bobby’s decision to endorse Trump today is a betrayal of the values that our father and our family hold most dear. It is a sad ending to a sad story.”
