Raleigh, North Carolina — RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina's presidential ballot is likely to be long this fall after three political groups hoping to field candidates submitted lists of voter signatures to the state Board of Elections by Monday's deadline.
The groups supporting Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West (We the People's Party and Justice for All Party, respectively) and the Constitution Party have launched petition drives to receive official party designation, which would allow them to field candidates for any office in the November election, not just for president.
Under state law, political parties hoping to run had to collect at least 13,865 valid signatures from registered and eligible voters and submit a sufficient petition by noon Monday. The signature list had to be submitted to the county clerk's office by May 17 to give officials time to determine whether they were registered.
The State Board of Elections' petition webpage shows all three groups have valid signatures that exceed the threshold, but board staff still need to verify the signatures and petition details to ensure compliance. The state board, made up of three Democrats and two Republicans, should meet soon to take a formal vote to recognize any or all of the groups as new political parties. The new parties would need to submit candidates to the ballot promptly.
The addition of a presidential candidate adds another layer of stakes and uncertainty to who will win North Carolina's 16 electoral votes. Republican Donald Trump won the state in both 2016 and 2020, but by less than 1.5 percentage points to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020, the narrowest margin of victory of any state Trump won that year.
North Carolina already recognizes the Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Greens and No Labels parties, but the largest group of voters in the state are registered independents, accounting for about 2.8 million of the state's roughly 7.5 million registered voters.
Italo Medelius-Marsano, co-chairman of North Carolina's Justice for All party, said the fact that his group spent three months collecting signatures speaks to public frustration with the major political parties.
“This is truly a testament to the will of North Carolinians to defeat the two-party system,” he said at a news conference in Raleigh. “People are tired of two parties controlling the national vote.”
In North Carolina, getting on the ballot as a new party candidate is easier than getting on the ballot as an independent, as state law requires independent candidates to gather a minimum of 83,188 qualified signatures, which they would have had to submit sooner.
Mr West, a progressive activist, announced the formation of a national Justice for All party earlier this year to secure voting rights in certain states. We the People was formed to support Ms Kennedy, an author and environmental lawyer, in running in states such as North Carolina.
Kennedy's campaign announced over the weekend that he was officially on the ballot in eight states and had collected signatures to appear on the ballot in nine others. West's campaign announced Monday that he has now qualified in seven states.
The Constitution Party has been the official political party in North Carolina in the past and was the official party in the state of North Carolina most recently in the 2020 election. The national party nominated anti-abortion activist Randall Terry as its presidential candidate.
The North Carolina State Committee recognized No Label as the official political party in North Carolina last August, but in April the political movement announced it would not field a presidential candidate.
Gaining party status in North Carolina means registered voters can officially affiliate with the new party. As of last weekend, about 10,300 registered voters belonged to No Labels and about 2,200 to the Green Party.
