BETHLEHEM, Pa. — A legal effort to keep Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. off the ballot in Pennsylvania is picking up steam — and catching the eyes of the Keystone State’s polling experts.
A petition filed Thursday argues that the nominating papers filed by Kennedy and his running mate, Silicon Valley attorney Nicole Shanahan, “demonstrate, at best, a fundamental disregard” of state law and the signature-gathering process.
Kennedy’s paperwork contains “numerous ineligible signatures and defect,” including documents that are torn or taped over, as well as irregular handwriting patterns “suggestive that the indicated voters did not sign those sheets.”
Christopher Borick, who serves as director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion, says such ballot access hurdles are not uncommon for third-party candidates in Pennsylvania.
“We see them a lot in Pennsylvania. They’re classically adjudicated… sometimes resulting in significant rejection of signatures and removal [from] the ballot,” said Borick, also a political science professor at the liberal arts school in Allentown’s West End.
Kennedy — who was already removed from the ballot in New York after a judge rejected his residency claim — has consistently polled poorly in Pennsylvania relative to other swing states.
An Emerson College poll conducted in mid-July found that just 6.3% of Keystone State voters would support a candidate other than Donald Trump or then-Democratic nominee Joe Biden — the smallest share of all battleground states explored by the poll.
Despite this, Borick believes Kennedy could still be “impactful” in the general election if allowed to remain on Pennsylvania’s ballot.
“Even if he gets 3 or 4 points, of course it becomes a game of who are those votes getting siphoned from,” Borick said.
Asked where Kennedy’s voters could go if he’s kept off the ballot, Borick challenged conventional wisdom that his third-party campaign would hurt Democrats.
“For a long time, the exception was that [Kennedy] would hurt the Democrats more,” Borick said.
“…But there seems to be substantial evidence that if he moves the needle away from one or the other, that Trump might be more damaged,” he added.
Where Kennedy voters might go in Pennsylvania’s critical down-ballot races — such as the Senate election between Bob Casey and Dave McCormick, as well as tight House races in the state’s 7th, 8th and 17th congressional districts — remains uncertain, according to Borick.
“Can RFK Jr. be impactful? Yeah, Jill Stein was impactful,” Borick said with a chuckle.
Kennedy’s lawyers remain confident that the effort to remove him from Pennsylvania’s ballot will fail.
Kennedy campaign lawyer Larry Otter told the Associated Press that the lawyer who filed the petition “makes specious allegations and is obviously not familiar with the process of amending a circulator’s affidavit, which seems to be the gist of his complaint.”
Besides Pennsylvania and New York, Kennedy faces ongoing legal challenges to ballot access in several other states — including from a liberal PAC in Democratic-heavy Illinois.
