RFK Jr. Pennsylvania Election Petition Challenged by Democrat-Linked PAC

A Democratic political action committee has initiated legal proceedings that could bar Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an independent presidential candidate, from being considered for the November election in Pennsylvania.

Kennedy, an environmental lawyer and longtime vaccine skeptic, has worked to secure voting access in all 50 states. He filed ballot papers in Pennsylvania in June.

Pure choice of action challenged Kennedy’s petition in Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court on Thursday. The group, which focuses on attacking independent and nonpartisan presidential candidates, has challenged Kennedy’s candidacy in other states, including New York and Illinois.

While Kennedy’s candidacy does not pose a grave challenge to either Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump, he could attract enough votes from either candidate to swing the election in a key Commonwealth region.

A May Philadelphia Inquirer/New York Times/Siena College poll found that 10 percent of Pennsylvanians supported Kennedy. But the poll was conducted before President Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign and Harris was nominated as the Democratic nominee.

Independent candidates have a history of being spoilers in PennsylvaniaIn 2016, Green Party candidate Jill Stein She won nearly 50,000 votes in the state, while former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lost by just over 44,000 votes.

Before he suspended his campaign, Biden showed some evidence that he was concerned about Kennedy’s role in the race. In April, he held a rally in Philadelphia with several Kennedy family members who announced their support for the Democratic incumbent president.

The Clear Choice petition claimed that Kennedy had falsified his address on the documents and that several pages of signatures on the petition should be ignored. It also claimed that Pennsylvania law required Kennedy to submit more signatures than he collected.

“All presidential candidates in the United States face the same scrutiny and mandatory requirements for ballot access, yet time and again across the country, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his We the People party have misled voters, failed to meet legal requirements, and made a mockery of the democratic process,” Clear Choice Action founder Pete Kavanaugh said in a statement.

The speed with which the case unfolds could have implications for election offices across the state. County boards of elections can begin sending ballots to voters who requested them on Sept. 16, but they can only begin the process if any legal challenges to ballot access are resolved in time to print valid ballots.

Challenging candidates listed on the ballot in the April primary contributed to delays in vote processing in Montgomery County, where mail-in ballots reached some voters just three days before the election.