A lawsuit filed Thursday seeks to remove independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from the Pennsylvania ballot in the Nov. 5 election, alleging fraud and other problems with his nominating papers.
The lawsuit, filed in the Court of Common Pleas on behalf of two voters from Dauphin County and Philadelphia, alleges that the nominating papers that Kennedy and his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, submitted to the Pennsylvania Department of State for inclusion on the ballot “demonstrate, at best, a fundamental disregard for the ballot process and Pennsylvania law.”
Kennedy, the son of U.S. Attorney General and Senator Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of President John F. Kennedy, is running as the We the People Party candidate. His campaign says that unlike other independent candidates, Kennedy and Shanahan will appear on the ballot in all 50 states.
The Pennsylvania lawsuit, however, claims that Kennedy’s nominating petitions list a New York address that is not his home. Kennedy has been a eternal resident of California since marrying his wife, actress Cheryl Hines, in 2014, the lawsuit alleges.
Kennedy’s legal residence case in New York state court finished on Thursday and a judge will likely decide soon whether Kennedy’s name should remain on the ballot. A Democratic super PAC is backing the lawsuit.
The New York lawsuit makes a similar claim that while Kennedy’s New York nominating petitions list an address in the New York suburbs, his actual place of residence is in California.
A statement from the Kennedy campaign said: statement thursday that his voter registration, falconry license and law practice are all in New York, where he also pays taxes. Kennedy said he plans to return to New York when “Curb Your Enthusiasm” star Hines retires.
The residency issue poses an insurmountable problem for the Kennedy campaign, since vice presidential candidate Shanahan also lives in California. The U.S. Constitution prohibits a state’s presidential electors from casting votes for presidential and vice presidential candidates if both are from that state, meaning Kennedy could not receive California’s Electoral College votes.
“For these reasons, Candidate Kennedy provided his New York address in order to deceive Pennsylvania voters. Providing a California address would be inconsistent with his campaign and its goals,” the lawsuit alleges, adding that because he allegedly acted with the intent to deceive voters, he has no right to amend the documents.
The lawsuit also claims that Kennedy’s nomination papers do not meet the 33,043 signature requirement required by the Pennsylvania Election Code for candidates outside a major party.
While federal courts have found that the requirement may be unconstitutional and the secretary of state will accept nominating petitions containing 5,000 signatures, Kennedy has not proven that requiring more signatures is unconstitutional in his case, the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit alleges that the original nomination applications filed with the State Department also contain evidence of fraud.
The document said a review of the documents revealed a “surprising concern.” Almost 300 of the sheets sent contained a different circulation statement that was taped to the original document. Because the novel statement could not be removed without damaging the paper, it made it impossible to examine the original statement.
The lawsuit also cites other flaws in the documents, including torn pages, “handwriting patterns and corrections” that suggest the voters whose names appear on them did not sign the petitions and that, based on campaign practices in other states, some canvassers whose names appear on the petitions were not the people who collected voter signatures.
The lawsuit was filed by attorney Timothy Ford of the law firm of Dilworth Paxson in Philadelphia.
Kennedy’s campaign did not immediately respond to the Capital-Star’s request for comment on Thursday.
