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Two years ago, the Democratic-controlled state Board of Elections declined to certify a petition from the Green Party to be recognized as an official party.
The party sued. A federal judge ordered the state to give the Greens a spot on the ballot, and later ordered the N.C. Democratic Party to pay the Green Party’s legal fees for a “frivolous” and “unreasonable” challenge of their ballot access drive.
A similar situation is playing out in 2024.
The N.C. Board of Elections declined on Tuesday to certify petitions by progressive academic Cornel West’s Justice For All Party. The board’s three Democrats voted against Justice For All. The two Republicans voted yes. (The board did allow Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s We The People Party to be on the ballot.)
On social media, West wrote: “Democracy is under attack! The NC Board of Elections and the Democrats are blocking the Justice For All Party from the ballot. We must stand up and fight back! Demand justice and ensure every vote counts.”
National polls have shown West getting about 1% of the vote.
Donald Trump won North Carolina by 1.3%, so it’s understandable why Democrats would be concerned about West ― an African American, semi-celebrity academic who is running to the left of Joe Biden. (Note: This column was originally published Friday, before Biden's withdrawal from the race Sunday).
A representative from Justice For All in North Carolina said the group would file a lawsuit challenging the rejection, just as the Greens did.
Just as it did in 2022, the N.C. Democratic Party urged the board to reject both RFK’s party and West’s party. It said Kennedy and West are actually independent candidates running ― and independent candidates need to collect roughly six times as many signatures to qualify under state law.
(Democratic Board member Siobhan O’Duffy Millen said she believed Kennedy and West were using the parties simply as vehicles to gain ballot access and should be considered independent candidates. She noted they are using different methods and different parties in other states to get on the ballot, and she voted against certifying both.)
Investigation into signatures
To gain recognition and ballot access, a new party in North Carolina has to collect just under 14,000 signatures from voters. The state elections board attempted to interview 250 people who signed the Justice For All petition.
Investigators wanted to know whether the people organizing the petition were forthright about what they were doing as required by state law. The idea is you can’t tell someone they are signing a petition for world peace — or to support a concept like “justice for all” — when it’s in fact to get a political party on the ballot.
Elections investigators couldn’t reach 201 of them.
Of the 49 interviewed, 18 said they did not sign the petition and three said they don’t remember signing.
That left 28 people who continued the interview.
Of those, five said they didn’t understand the purpose of the petition.
Most of the others had a general idea of what they were signing, telling investigators that they signed to introduce “additional parties thus reducing polarization” or “to have more people available to vote for” or “get someone on the ballot to run for office as a third party.”
In all, 16 of the 28 were able to offer a clear reason why they signed.
Only one person wanted their name off of the petition.
Democratic elections board members pointed out that nearly half of the people interviewed said they didn’t sign or couldn’t remember signing. Republicans countered that there’s no precedent for using a sample of 49 people who happened to be reached invalidating thousands more voter signatures.
Democratic elections board members questioned why one of the third-party organizations used to collect signatures for Justice For All declined a subpoena by the state.
The board’s two Republicans protested, including Stacy “Four” Eggers.
He said it’s understandable why the signature collector objected to the subpoena, citing First Amendment issues.
“We don't ask the NAACP or the NRA to provide us with their membership information, so I'm not sure why that was requested here,” Eggers said. “Even if you discount the fact that the petition itself clearly says it is for the formation of a new political party, there's not any evidence that over 3,000 people whose signatures have been verified as legitimate were 'fooled' into signing a petition to create a new political party.”
He added: “The state board has put itself in a difficult spot in light of the Green Party case. I’m surprised we are following that same path. I don’t think it ended well for the state board.”
Eggers said the county elections boards had already certified 17,000 Justice For All signatures — 3,000 more than needed. And he raised a fundamental question: Is it fair to go back and ask voters if they really meant it — something we don’t do for other elections?
Weaponization of law?
Italo Medelius is leading Justice For All’s efforts in North Carolina. Leading up to the vote, he complained the state Democratic Party was playing a chicken-or-egg game with West and his followers.
Medelius wrote that Democrats are arguing that “JFA cannot become a political party because it is not yet already a political party. North Carolina law does not require any such absurdity. Such interpretation of ballot access law would serve to curb the formation of any new political parties, which would further solidify the stranglehold of the Democratic Party over the public ballot through the weaponization of the Law.”
In a July letter he wrote: “If my only crime is supporting Independence from the two parties, throw me in jail.”
