NORTH CAROLINA — North Carolina will now have two third-party candidates on the ballot this election season.
READ MORE: Justice for All joins lawsuit against state election commission, awaits decision on voting access
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A Republican federal judge ruled Monday that the Justice for All party and its candidate, activist and professor Cornel West, should be on the ballot in November.
“We fought hard against what we perceived as an unjust barrier to our participation in the democratic process, put in place by a partisan body,” Italo Medelius, co-chair of Justice for All, said in a press release. “Today we celebrate not only our victory, but also the preservation of democracy.”
U.S. District Judge Terrence Boyle ordered the North Carolina State Board of Elections to recognize the party. Three Fayetteville voters had sued the board, alleging it violated their constitutional right to support West and Justice for All this year. The lawsuit was filed and initiated by Justice for All after the board voted 3-2 last month to deny the party ballot access, which in turn would harm the campaigns of its presidential candidate, Cornel West, and Winston-Salem mayoral candidate Frankie Gist. The Democratic majority on the board claimed that the Justice for All party’s petition had collected fraudulent signatures.
Boyle’s reversal came after another judge on Monday sided with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the We the People party in keeping representation on North Carolina’s ballot despite the state Democratic Party’s suing of the state election board. Some have argued that progressive third-party candidates are stealing votes from the Democratic nominee.
Port City Daily reached out to the North Carolina Stage Board of Elections on Tuesday to ask if it had any response to the Justice for All or We the People ballots. The Press received no response.
For Justice for All to have representation in North Carolina, it needed about 13,800 signatures. The party had originally submitted 30,000 or more, but many were disregarded because the state board determined they had been obtained through questionable means. In the final count, however, Justice for All met the benchmark by about 3,400 more signatures than required, meeting the county board’s June 1 deadline.
The plaintiffs believed that the board had abused the certification process.
Boyle heard from attorneys Phillip Strach of Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough – a firm frequently hired by the Republican Party for voting rights and gerrymandering cases – representing voters, Mary Carla Babb spoke for the State Council at a July 30 hearing, and Oliver Hall for Justice for All.
Strach stated at the hearing that the party’s certified signatures were reason enough to put them on the ballot.
“That should be the end of the story,” he told the judge.
Boyle agreed.
In his ruling, he said voters’ First Amendment rights were severely compromised because the party met the state’s legal requirements for enrollment. He also questioned the state panel’s process for identifying false signatures.
“The panel’s conclusion that a ‘substantial portion’ of signatories told the panel that they had not signed and that ‘many others’ had not been informed of the purpose of the JFA does not stand up to scrutiny,” Boyle wrote in his 30-page order. “The panel relied on a survey conducted by NCSBE staff that has serious flaws.”
The state Board of Elections delayed the ballots for We the People and Justice for All for three weeks earlier this summer, saying staff would need to verify the legality of signatures to get on the ballot. The board ultimately agreed to put We the People on the 2024 ballot but rejected Justice for All.
Strach described the committee’s hair-splitting as a “sloppy examination.”
The state committee’s attorney, Babb, claimed the committee violated state law and Justice for All did not follow the law.
During the state election board’s June meeting, testimony was considered from the Clear Choice Action Group, a Democratic group that campaigns against “cynical attempts to abuse state election laws and mislead voters.” The group showed a video of Scott Presler, a conservative activist who was collecting signatures for “We the People” on a clipboard at a Trump rally in Wilmington earlier this spring, saying, “This is helping to take votes away from Joseph Biden.”
The Clear Choice Action Group filed a brief on the case for Boyle to review, accusing Justice for All’s petitions of being a “farce”; the party is an all-volunteer effort collecting signatures to get West on the ballot nationwide. The CCA claimed the party’s petitions were “marred by fraudulent and deceptive signature-gathering practices by third-party groups that are neither affiliated with the proposed party nor on the same political side.”
NBC News reported in June that the Republican firm Blitz Canvassing had at least three former or current Republican employees helping the party collect signatures.
West’s campaign spokesman Edwin DeJesus told the news channel that the third party has numerous supporters from all political camps this election season. But West’s camp, quoted by outside Democrats, influenced the panel’s decision not to put him on the ballot, “resulting in significant procedural errors.”
Republican lawmakers also filed a brief with the courts in the JFA case. They pointed out that lawmakers monitor state laws and therefore wanted to ensure that the rules for admitting a new party were followed and that citizens’ right to vote was not compromised. The lawmakers believed that the state committee acted in a discriminatory manner in rejecting Justice for All.
“From the initial delay in the process to the final rejection based on a questionable poll, the State Board took its cue from Clear Choice – a group that openly advocates keeping third-party candidates off the ballot to protect Democrats,” the court filing said.
State Council Chairman Alan Hirsch and Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell were called before the General Assembly’s Reform and Oversight Committee last month to testify about their reasoning behind rejecting Justice for All, claiming the signature issues were caused by county councils, not outsiders.
State Election Board staff investigated Justice for All petitions by taking a sample of 49 people out of 250 signatories. Of these, 18 claimed they did not sign the petition, three could not remember signing, and eight said they were not informed of the party’s purpose and intent when signing, while 28 agreed to sign. They claimed that was enough to establish fraud.
Boyle disagreed, saying that 15 of these 28 people “understood the purpose of the petition” and supported a new political party; 13 felt they had been adequately informed.
“To conclude from this survey that a ‘substantial portion’ of the signatories did not sign and that ‘many others’ were not informed of the purpose and intent defies all reason,” the judge wrote. “This survey – conducted months after the petitions were collected and based on an extremely small percentage of the petition signers – is wholly inadequate to support the panel’s decision in its narrow interpretation.”
Medelius and West noted in a press release Tuesday that Boyle’s ruling is of great importance for the diverse political representation in the state.
“The court’s decision to allow our candidates on the ballot is not only a victory for JFA, but a victory for every North Carolinian who believes in the power of the vote and the strength of democracy,” Medelius said.
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