By John Kruzel
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Friday to restore the Green Party to the Nevada ballot, cementing a bid by Democrats to keep the party and its presidential candidate Jill Stein from competing in this battleground state in the Nov. 5 election.
The justices refused to halt a Nevada Supreme Court ruling that had barred the Green Party because it used the wrong form when collecting signatures from voters to qualify for a place on the ballot. The Green Party had argued the ruling by Nevada’s top court violated the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment guarantees of equal protection and due process.
Nevada is among a handful of states expected to decide the outcome of the U.S. presidential election pitting Republican Donald Trump against Democrat Kamala Harris. Democrats are concerned that the Green Party candidate could siphon support away from Harris, the U.S. vice president.
The left-leaning Green Party is represented in the case by attorney Jay Sekulow, who previously served as legal counsel to Trump, the former president.
Under Nevada law, the Green Party was required to obtain 10,095 signatures in order to appear on the 2024 ballot. People collecting the signatures were also required to submit affidavits attesting to their belief that each signatory was a registered voter in the county where they reside.
The Nevada Secretary of State’s office mistakenly pointed the Green Party to an incorrect affidavit form – one meant for ballot initiatives and referenda, not political parties – that lacked the reference to the voter registration status of signatories. The secretary of state went on to approve the Green Party for the 2024 ballot after it submitted 29,584 signatures.
The Nevada Democratic Party in June filed a lawsuit in state court challenging the Green Party’s ballot access on the grounds that its signatures were invalid.
A Nevada state court judge rejected the Democratic challenge, finding that the affidavit form that the Green Party used, though incorrect, substantially complied with state law.
On appeal, the Nevada Supreme Court in a 5-2 ruling on Sept. 6 reversed the judge’s decision and barred the Green Party from the ballot, finding its signatures were invalid and that even a “cursory review” by the party would have revealed the paperwork error.
Two appellate judges in dissent wrote that they would have preserved the Green Party’s place on the ballot because of its “substantial compliance” with the law and due to the “egregious error by the secretary of state’s office” in directing the party to use the incorrect form.
Sekulow, in an emergency application to the U.S. Supreme Court, said the Green Party’s candidates had been “wrongfully ripped from the ballot,” and that “Nevadans who would vote for them in this election are robbed of the opportunity to do so.”
Stein, the Green Party’s presidential candidate, criticized Democrats after Nevada’s top court issued its ruling.
“This is more shameless hypocrisy from the party that preaches about ‘saving democracy’ while doing all it can to kill it,” Stein said. “We’ve faced legal attacks from Democrats in state after state, and it’s clear their goal is not only to deny a real choice to voters, but also to tie up our time, money and resources in fighting these lawfare attacks.”
Elections analyst J. Miles Coleman of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics said that Stein’s presence on the ballot in Nevada would have required Democrats to work a bit harder to turn out their voters to defeat Republicans.
“The Harris campaign clearly wants things to be as ‘two-party’ as possible,” Coleman said. “Fewer third-party candidates would make it easier for Harris to consolidate the ‘not-Trump’ vote.”
(Reporting by John Kruzel; Editing by Will Dunham and Chizu Nomiyama)
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