WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Friday to restore the Green Party to the Nevada ballot, cementing a bid by Democrats to keep the party and its presidential candidate Jill Stein from competing in this battleground state in the Nov. 5 election.
The justices refused to halt a Nevada Supreme Court ruling that had barred the Green Party because it used the wrong form when collecting signatures from voters to qualify for a place on the ballot. The Green Party had argued the ruling by Nevada’s top court violated the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment guarantees of equal protection and due process.
Nevada is among a handful of states expected to decide the outcome of the U.S. presidential election pitting Republican Donald Trump against Democrat Kamala Harris. Democrats are concerned that the Green Party candidate could siphon support away from Harris, the U.S. vice president.
The left-leaning Green Party is represented in the case by attorney Jay Sekulow, who previously served as legal counsel to Trump, the former president.
Under Nevada law, the Green Party was required to obtain 10,095 signatures in order to appear on the 2024 ballot. People collecting the signatures were also required to submit affidavits attesting to their belief that each signatory was a registered voter in the county where they reside.
The Nevada Secretary of State’s office mistakenly pointed the Green Party to an incorrect affidavit form — one meant for ballot initiatives and referenda, not political parties — that lacked the reference to the voter registration status of signatories. The secretary of state went on to approve the Green Party for the 2024 ballot after it submitted 29,584 signatures.
Elections analyst J. Miles Coleman of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics said that Stein’s presence on the ballot in Nevada would have required Democrats to work a bit harder to turn out their voters to defeat Republicans.