Former President Donald Trump's presidential campaign is accusing the North Carolina State Board of Elections of "blatant election interference" after its Democratic majority denied certification for three political parties, which would keep Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West, and anti-abortion activist Randall Terry off the state's ballots.
"Throughout this election we have seen Democrats try to engage in blatant election interference because they know they have a flawed candidate in Crooked Joe Biden," Trump campaign communications director Steven Cheung said in a statement after Wednesday's announcement. "We have seen it with the weaponization of the justice system in an effort to take President Trump off the campaign trail and even off the ballot, depriving Americans their constitutional right to vote for their candidate of choice."
And now, North Carolina's Democrats are working to "game the system" to help President Joe Biden, said Cheung.
"The assault on President Trump's 14th Amendment right of equal protection of the law is equally abhorrent as Democrats continue to shred the very fabric of our country," he added. "Those who have engaged in these un-American acts must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and receive the harshest punishment possible so these injustices will never be repeated."
The board Wednesday denied Kennedy's party, We the People; West's Justice for All; and Terry's the Constitution Party, from being certified, claiming concerns about petition-gatherers, improper addresses, and voters who had asked that their signatures be removed from petitions, reports The News & Observer in Raleigh.
Board Chair Alan Hirsch said that as the members noted they were voting "for now," the decision has not been made final.
He said a second vote will be taken next month. The state has a July 1 deadline for new candidates to file, but he said that if the parties are approved, he believes that deadline can be waived, based on a judge's ruling about the Green Party two years ago.
The two Republicans on the board voted to certify the parties, saying that the vote came after pressure from Democrats and a Biden-affiliated group to keep the third-party candidates off the ballots in North Carolina and nationwide.
The Biden-tied group, Clear Choice Action, sent a letter to the North Carolina board earlier this month claiming that it had found deficiencies in petition sheets for West's party. The group also contacted people who signed the Kennedy and West petitions to question them.
The letter also referred to reports from NBC News, which claimed that GOP activist who had been collecting signatures for Justice for All had told people at a Trump rally in the state that keeping West on the ballot "helps take away votes from Joe Biden."
Italo Medelius, North Carolina's co-chair for Justice for All, denied that anyone from the party said that it was campaigning to help Republicans win.
Board members also opposed wording in petitions for Kennedy that referred to him as an "independent" candidate.
"We have a whole different process in this state for getting on the ballot as an unaffiliated candidate, and that requires 85,000 signatures. So I would suggest that it's at least a question as to whether Mr. Kennedy belongs in that pot," said Siobhan Millen, a Democrat on the board. "Somebody that's an independent – they're not affiliated with any party."
Ceara Foley, representing We The People at the board's meeting said that the word meant "independent from the corporate duopoly."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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