The Democratic National Committee is really spooked about the prospect of going up against independent and third-party candidates this year. You’ve probably heard about the many lawsuits filed by the DNC against independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., so you may not be surprised to learn that a member of the DNC has now filed a complaint designed to remove Green Party candidate Jill Stein from the ballot in Wisconsin.
The Associated Press revealed on August 14 that a lawsuit filed by the DNC member argues that the Green Party is ineligible to run in Wisconsin. It matters, too; Wisconsin is typically won by just several thousand votes, and removing the Green Party candidate could give a huge advantage to the Democrats over the Republicans. In the last six presidential elections, the state has been won by a candidate with a margin as slim as 5,700 at the lowest and 23,000 at the highest.
In 2016, the last time that Stein appeared on the ballot as the Green Party presidential candidate, the party received some 31,000 votes. That was substantially more than the margin that former President Donald Trump won the state; some 23,000 votes. Had Stein not appeared on the ballot, a combination of voters not turning out at all or opting for the Democrats over the Republicans as an alternative could have flipped the state Blue.
Now imagine in 2024 if that margin is even smaller…you see why the Democrats want her off the ballot, right?
According to the legal complaint, the Green Party does not qualify to nominate presidential electors in Wisconsin, even though the elections commission approved ballot access for the party in February because it previously won more than 1% in a 2022 statewide race. Under state law, state officers are the only people who can legally nominate electors – and given that the Green Party does not have any legislators or judges who qualify to become nominators, they cannot legally name electors in the chance that they win.
But why is the lawsuit only being filed now? Well, it could be the Green Party’s fault. Knowing that they didn’t have anybody eligible to nominate electors, the Wisconsin Green Party could have launched write-in campaigns for candidates in the primaries held on Tuesday – but they failed to do so. Now, with no time to elect anybody who qualifies, the Green Party is facing the risk of being kicked off the ballot.
And just as the DNC got Kennedy kicked off the ballot in the New York, they could win here…
