ATLANTA (AP) โ Presidential candidatesย Cornel Westย and Claudia De la Cruz arenโt qualified to be on Georgiaโs ballots and votes for them should not count, the Georgia Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.
Following a hearing Tuesday, the unanimous court agreed that West and De la Cruz failed to qualify. That is because their presidential electors did not each submit a separate petition with the 7,500 signatures needed to access Georgiaโs ballots. Instead, only one petition per candidate was submitted, as specified by Georgiaโs secretary of state.
Democrats who are trying to prevent other candidates from siphoning votes from Vice President Kamala Harris challenged West and De la Cruzโs positions on the ballot. West and De la Cruz qualified as independents in Georgia, although De la Cruz is the nominee of the Party for Socialism and Liberation.
โDemocratic Party lawyers and the Republican-majority Supreme Court worked together to suppress democracy,โ De la Cruz said in a statement. โThis unjust ruling is a reminder of why it is so urgent to build an alternative outside the two-party system.โ
A spokesperson for Westโs campaign urged voters to still choose him even though such ballots wouldnโt be counted.
โHis name is still appearing on the ballot,โ spokesperson Edwin DeJesus said. โWe encourage all voters supporting our campaign to cast their vote for Cornel West in Georgia.โ
The names of both candidates will remain on Georgiaโs ballots, but votes for them wonโt be counted, said Robert Sinners, a spokesperson forย Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. A lawyer for Raffensperger told justices Tuesday that it is too late to reprint ballots, in part because not enough watermarked security paper is available. There could also be problems with reprogramming voting machines.
If ordered to disqualify the candidates, Raffensperger will order notices in polling places and mailed-out ballots warning that votes for West and De la Cruz wonโt count, Sinners said. That is a common remedy for late ballot changes in Georgia.
The disqualifications will leave Georgia voters with the choice of four presidential candidates โ Harris for the Democrats, Republican Donald Trump, Libertarian Chase Oliver and the Green Partyโs Jill Stein.
Democrats, Republicans and Libertarians automatically qualify for elections in Georgia. Even four candidates will be the most since 2000 in Georgia.
Justice Sarah Warren, writing for a unanimous court, affirmed the rulings ofย two lower court judgesย who separately overturned Raffenspergerโs decisions to qualify West and De la Cruz.
โBut the defect that prevents independent presidential candidates West and De la Cruz from appearing on Georgiaโs ballot does not pertain to the number of signatures acquired; it is that Westโs electors and De la Cruzโs electors filed no nomination petitions at all,โ Warren wrote
Justices rejected the argument that a 2017 federal court decision that lowered the signature threshold for statewide ballot access to 7,500 โ citing constitutional issues โ should also prohibit the claim that each of the 16 electors should have to file petitions, which would require a total of 120,000 valid signatures.
โNo constitutional challenge to the current statutory scheme for qualifying candidates for the office of elector of independent candidates for president is properly before this court in these cases,โ Warren wrote. โWe therefore express no view on any such constitutional questions today.โ
Because the court ruled no elector submitted a valid petition, an appeal into federal court on constitutional grounds could be difficult, said Bryan Tyson, a lawyer who represented West.
Georgia isย one of several statesย where Democrats have challenged third-party and independent candidates, seeking to block nominees who could take votes from Harris after President Joe Biden won Georgia by fewer than 12,000 votes in 2020.
โTodayโs ruling affirms what two judges have already found: neither of these candidates is qualified to be on the ballot, and the Secretary of State attempting to ignore the judgesโ rulings doesnโt make state election law any less clear,โ said Democratic Party of Georgia Executive Director Tolulope Kevin Olasanoye.
Republicans in Georgia have sought to keep all the candidates on the ballot, and the party has pushed to prop up liberal third-party candidatesย in battleground states.
Those interests contributed to a flurry of legal activity in Georgia. Anย administrative law judgeย disqualified West, De la Cruz,ย Robert F. Kennedy Jr.ย and the Georgia Green Party from the ballot. Raffensperger, a Republican, overruled the judge, and said West and De la Cruz should get access. He also ruled that under aย new Georgia lawย Stein should go on Georgia ballots because the national Green Party qualified her in at least 20 other states.
Kennedyโs name stayed off ballots because he withdrew his candidacy in Georgia afterย suspending his campaignย and endorsing Trump.
