As of this writing, it is unclear whether independent presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy, Jr., despite filing over 135,000 signatures, will succeed at getting his name placed on the New York State Nov. 5 general election ballot.
In a lawsuit filed on May 20, (a full week prior to the May 28 petition filing deadline) against the entire NYS Board of Elections (NYSBE) and New York State Attorney General Leticia James, certain aspects of the constitutionally dubious process to attain ballot access in the appropriately named “Empire State” are challenged, while also revealing a massive dirty tricks campaign to disqualify the presidential campaign of Robert Kennedy in New York.
First was the fraudulent petition circulating scheme “exposed” by the New York Times in a feature, “Are R.F.K. Jr. Signature Gatherers Misleading New Yorkers for Ballot Access?” They revealed a half-dozen New York voters reported that Kennedy petitioners were hiding the top of the page when soliciting signatures, and just saying, “This is to get more progressives on the ballot” or other vagaries. The lawsuit reveals that Team Kennedy had hired two petition-collecting firms that turned out to be tied to the DNC. After the Times article came out, Team Kennedy examined the collected petitions, and discovered over 8,000 signatures on pages which were creased exactly below the text of the petition, indicating that indeed, the text of the petition had been hidden by circulators. The campaign tossed these 8,000 signatures, but then decided it were prudent to discard 30,000 signatures collected by these firms, at a cost of $313,000. These signatures were not included in the 135,000 signatures Kennedy filed on May 28.
Second, another firm hired by the campaign, (which by now was paying petitioners a rich $90/hr) alleged by Team Kennedy attorneys to have ties to the Trump campaign, told their petitioners that in order to be hired, they must first sign a nominating petition for Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, in violation of NYSBE rules, that a “witness” petitioner may not have signed a nominating petition for any other candidate for the same office for which they are collecting signatures. This meant that all signatures gathered by these petitioners would be deemed “invalid” and discounted if a challenge were brought to throw Kennedy off the ballot.
