Dem
49
GOP
51
You don't often see "Robert F. Kennedy Jr." and "win" in the same sentence, but he got a pretty big win in North Carolina this week. The state Supreme Court, which has been stacked with far-right justices, ruled that he must be removed from the ballot.
This ruling runs contrary to multiple laws, federal and state. Starting with the latter, Kennedy missed the deadline for removal, and according to North Carolina statutes, he could only be removed if it was "practicable." It wasn't, because more than half of North Carolina's counties had already printed ballots. Oh, and the state will not begin early voting on the date required by state law (September 6). As to federal law, the state is required to send ballots to servicemembers no later than September 21. Election officials say they probably won't be able to make the cutoff, because they have to redesign hundreds of ballots.
All of this has two effects that are desirable, as far as Team Trump is concerned. First, there will obviously be less early voting. Since early voting tends to favor Democrats, this is a win for the Republican ticket. Second, with millions of non-valid ballots to be destroyed, and millions of valid ballots to be quickly designed, printed and distributed, it will create chaos. That jibes well with future plans to claim fraud, deceit, trickery, etc. And, of course, North Carolina could well be the linchpin of the whole election.
Kennedy has been a sleazeball for decades. But now you can add "antidemocratic" to his list of sobriquets. (Z)