The Georgia Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that presidential candidates Cornel West and Claudia de la Cruz are not eligible to appear on Georgia ballots and that votes for them should not be counted.
After a hearing on Tuesday, a unanimous court agreed that West and de la Cruz failed to qualify. This is because each of his presidential electors did not submit a separate petition with the 7,500 signatures needed to reach Georgia’s ballots. Instead, only one petition was submitted per candidate, as specified by the Georgia Secretary of State.
Democrats who are trying to prevent other candidates from taking votes from the Vice President kamala harrychallenged the positions of West and de la Cruz on the ballot. West and de la Cruz qualified as independents in Georgia, although de la Cruz is the candidate of the Party for Socialism and Liberation.
“Democratic Party lawyers and the Republican-majority Supreme Court worked together to suppress democracy,” de la Cruz said in a statement. “This unjust decision is a reminder of why it is so important to create an alternative outside the two-party system.” ,
A spokesperson for West’s campaign urged voters to still elect him, even though such ballots would not be counted.
“His name still appears on the ballot,” spokesman Edwin DeJesus said. “We encourage all voters who support our campaign to cast their vote for Cornel West in Georgia.”
Both candidates’ names will remain on Georgia ballots, but votes for them will not be counted, said Robert Sinners, a spokesman for Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. A lawyer for Raffensperger told judges Tuesday that it was too late to reprint the ballots, in part because sufficient watermarked security paper was not available. There may also be problems with reprogramming voting machines.
If the candidates are ordered disqualified, Raffensperger will order notices at polling places and mailed out ballots warning that votes for West and de la Cruz will not be counted, Sinners said. This is a common solution for late voting changes in Georgia.
The disqualification will leave Georgia voters with a choice of four presidential candidates – Harris for the Democrats, Harris for the Republicans donald trumpLibertarian Chase Oliver and the Green Party’s Jill Stein.
Democrats, Republicans, and Libertarians automatically qualify for election in Georgia. Even Georgia will have four candidates, the most since 2000.
Justice Sarah Warren, writing for a unanimous court, affirmed the rulings of two lower court judges who had separately overturned Raffensperger’s decision to disqualify West and de la Cruz.
“But the flaw that prevents independent presidential candidates West and de la Cruz from appearing on the Georgia ballot is not related to the number of signatures received; It is that West’s voters and De La Cruz’s voters did not file any nominating petitions at all,” Warren wrote.
The judges rejected the argument that a 2017 federal court decision that lowered the signature threshold for statewide ballot access to 7,500 cited constitutional issues — also barring claims that every one of the 16 electors should file the petition, which would require a total of $120,000. Valid signature.
“In these cases, there is no constitutional challenge before this Court to the present statutory scheme of qualifying independent candidates for the presidency as electors,” Warren wrote. “We therefore express no view today on any such constitutional question.”
Brian Tyson, the attorney representing West, said that because the court ruled that no electors had submitted a valid petition, it could be difficult to appeal to federal court on constitutional grounds.
Georgia is one of several states where Democrats have challenged third parties and independent candidates, trying to block those candidates from taking votes from Harris after President Joe Biden won Georgia by less than 12,000 votes in 2020. Can take.
The Democratic Party said, “Today’s decision confirms what the two judges have already found: that none of these candidates are qualified to be on the ballot, and the Secretary of State’s effort to ignore the judges’ rulings Doesn’t make state election law any less clear.” Executive Director Tolulope of Georgia Kevin Olasanoye.
Republicans in Georgia have sought to put all candidates on the ballot, and the party has emphasized promoting liberal third-party candidates in battleground states.
Those interests contributed to a flurry of legal activity in Georgia. An administrative law judge disqualified West, de la Cruz, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and the Georgia Green Party from voting. Raffensperger, a Republican, rejected the judge’s decision and said West and de la Cruz should have access. He also ruled that Stein should go on the Georgia ballot under Georgia’s new law because the national Green Party had qualified him in at least 20 other states.
Kennedy’s name remained off the ballots because he withdrew his candidacy in Georgia after suspending his campaign and endorsing Trump.