Democrats Use Lawfare To Block RFK Jr. From NY Ballot

A Democrat New York judge issued a ruling Monday that blocks independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr from the New York ballot in what is part of the left’s latest efforts to try and prevent Kennedy from spoiling Vice President Kamala Harris’ chances of winning.

Judge Christina Ryba issued a 34-page decision stating the bedroom that Kennedy allegedly rents in Katonah, New York is not a “bona fide and legitimate residence, but merely a ‘sham’ address that he assumed for the purpose of maintaining his voter registration” and assisting his presidential bid. Kennedy contends his primary residence has been New York since 1964 and that he pays New York state taxes and possesses a state driver’s license.

Ryba argues Kennedy’s primary residence is in California but that Kennedy has a “long-standing pattern” of using the addresses of friends and family to maintain his voter registration in New York.

“Kennedy’s designation of the 84 Croton Lake Road address as his ‘place of residence’ was a false statement requiring invalidation of the petition,” Ryba ruled.

Notably, if Kennedy’s primary residence is California, then should he win the Golden State he would not be eligible for the electoral college vote since his running mate, Nicole Shannahan, is a California resident and the 12th Amendment precludes candidates from receiving electoral votes if both candidates are from the same state.

Kennedy vowed to appeal the ruling, slamming Democrats for their use of lawfare to knock political opponents off the ballot — months after Democrats unsuccessfully tried to kick former President Donald Trump off the ballot in multiple states.

“The Democrats are showing contempt for democracy,” Kennedy said in a statement. “They aren’t confident they can win at the ballot box, so they are trying to stop voters from having a choice. We will appeal and we will win.”

“This case is an assault on New York voters who signed in record numbers to place me on their ballot,” Kennedy continued. “The DNC has become a party that uses lawfare in place of the democratic election process.”

Clear Choice Action — the same Democrat-aligned PAC behind the New York suit — is also pursuing the removal of Kennedy in battleground Pennsylvania and Illinois. In Pennsylvania, Clear Choice Action argues Kennedy’s petition should be tossed because of “irregularities” with signatures and allegations Kennedy falsified his address.

The push in Pennsylvania comes just eight years after Hillary Clinton lost the state by roughly 44,000 votes while Green Party candidate Jill Stein received roughly 50,000 votes.

During the 2016 election in Wisconsin, Stein won 30,000 votes in the state that Trump won by just 22,000 votes. As The Federalist’s Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway explained in her bestseller Rigged, “Many Democrats blamed [Stein] for the Clinton loss, since she had won more votes than Clinton’s margin of defeat in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.”

But Democrats’ wizened up in 2020, with Wisconsin Democrats working to keep third-party candidates like Green Party nominee Howie Hawkins off the ballot “despite filling nearly twice the number of signatures necessary to appear on the ballot,” Hemingway explained. Similar to the challenges Kennedy faces now, a “Democratic donor and activist named Allen Arnsten had lodged a complaint, without providing evidence, that the Green Party’s vice presidential candidate may have listed an incorrect address on the party’s nominating petition,” Hemingway explained in Rigged.

A similar effort occurred in the Keystone State, with Democrats — after losing in the Commonwealth Court — appealing to the left-leaning state Supreme Court to kick Hawkins and his running mate, Angela Walker, off the ballot. Democrats successfully argued before the state’s Supreme Court that Walker, as explained by Hemingway, “faxed a copy of her affidavit without a cover letter and hand’t followed up to ensure it was received.”

“The final margin in Pennsylvania in 2020 was just over eighty thousands votes,” Hemingway wrote in Rigged. “Keeping the leftist party that received fifty thousand votes three years prior off the ballot was a huge victory for Biden.”

Democrats are willing to do whatever it takes to prevent Kennedy from acting as a Stein-like spoiler in key states, though they have been unsuccessful in their efforts in states like New Jersey, North Carolina, Utah, Hawaii and Idaho.

Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2