RALEIGH — For the third time in a month, North Carolina State Board of Elections met about certifying two proposed political parties that have presidential candidates who want to be included on the November election ballot.
The board voted to certify the We The People Party — with candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. — while denying candidate Cornell West’s Justice For All Party.
The North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) voted 4-1 to approve the We The People Party (WTP) but denied certification of the Justice For All Party (JFA) in a 3-2 party line vote.
The lone vote against WTP came from Siobhan Millen, who spent several minutes before the vote making the case that the motives of the two parties to gain certification were in conflict with state statutes.
Millen said she believed “North Carolina law was being misapplied” when it came to WTP and JFA.
“Our job is to look at the circumstances and see if they actually are parties,” Millen said. “People of good faith can disagree on that question.”
She also described in detail that WTP and JFA both were listed under different party names and affiliations in other states as a means of underscoring her point.
Millen described two statutes, one on rules for party formation (NC 163-96) and one on the powers and duties of the board of elections (NC 163-122). Millen asserted that the statutes needed to be “read together.”
Because the two statutes concern the same subject matter — petitions for ballot access — North Carolina precedent dictates that they must be construed using the Canon of in Pari Materia on the same subject matter,” Millen said. “Meaning that the two statutes are to be read together.”
Millen also claimed this interpretation of the statutes supported the denial of certification.
“The purpose and intent of a new party cannot merely be to place a particular candidate on the ballot because that is the subject matter of GS 163-122,” Millen said. “The statutory structure, in other words, makes it clear that a political party is intended to be more than a transitory entity designed to be a vehicle for a single candidate.”
However, the statute for party creation cited by Millen doesn’t include consideration of motives.
“I don’t really think that we need to hunt for, you know, what is a political party? Because the General Assembly has defined a political party in 163.96,” board member Kevin Lewis said following Millen’s commentary, adding that both parties obtained the required number of signatures.
Baord member Stacey “Four” Eggers echoed Lewis’ comments about signature thresholds, saying, “These parties have the necessary signatures and must be approved.”
Before the vote was taken on WTP, Chairman Alan Hirsch said he agreed with Millen’s take but would vote for certification of that party despite “subterfuge.”
“I am going to reluctantly vote to recognize We The People, even though I believe there has been subterfuge,” said Hirsch. “Fundamentally, because I think that it is such a close call that ultimately a court would have to decide it, and therefore I’m not sure the board should be the one that is standing in the way.”
During the discussion of JFA, Hirsch said the lawyers for JFA, as well as attorneys for groups who helped JFA collect signatures, had “refused to comply” with subpoenas from the NCSBE asking about their collection activities.
JFA North Carolina blasted the “illegal subpoenas” in a post on the social media platform X earlier this month. The post also included the party chair’s response and stated, “This is political persecution orchestrated by Marc Elias and the NC Democrats.”
Hirsch also recapped that staff had looked at a sample of 250 signatures that included phone numbers, only a handful of which staff were able to contact.
Eggers questioned the random sampling of JFA’s petition signatures and charactered it as a “fishing expedition.”
“Well, I will say that in the history of my knowledge of this board, have we ever taken a random sample and then extrapolated that polling to try and undo a decision that we’ve had before us?” Eggers asked.
“By my reading of this, we have 30 folks who have told us they did not sign, which still leaves this fishing expedition with 3,246 more signatures to go before you get under a threshold,” Eggers said. “I understand that you don’t like independent signature gatherers, but the statute doesn’t limit that.”
The statutory requirement signature threshold to certify a party in North Carolina is a calculation based on the percentage of registered voters in the most recent election. Getting 14,000 or more signatures would meet the requirement, which both groups obtained.
Following the votes, NCGOP Chairman Jason Simmons issued a statement critical of the board.
“The actions today from the Democrat-majority NC State Board of Elections confirms our belief they were explicitly acting out of political expediency for Democrats and Joe Biden,” Simmons said. “By all measures, both parties today should have been approved in June.”
The July 16 certification ends more than a month of third parties being denied certification to be on the ballot despite receiving the number of required signatures to qualify.
The NCSBE first voted not to certify the parties at a meeting on June 26; the vote was 3-2 down party lines. The votes denying certification came from the three Democrats. At its July 9 meeting, NCSBE Chair Alan Hirsch refused to bring a vote to certify the status of the two parties and postponed certification again.
At the July 9 meeting, the NCSBE did certify one party, unanimously reversing its June 26 decision to keep the Constitution Party off the ballot. Democratic members of the board had questioned the filing address listed on the party’s petition during the June meeting.
The failure to certify the remaining two parties drew national attention and accusations that the Democratic members of the NCSBE were protecting President Joe Biden by keeping other presidential candidates off the ballot.
On July 1, U.S. House Judiciary Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and U.S. House Committee on Administration Chairman Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.) announced a congressional probe into the matter.
Following the congressional probe announcement, the N.C. House Oversight and Reform Committee sent letters to Hirsch, NCSBE Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell and Lewis requesting they appear at a hearing on issue. The date of the hearing has not yet been announced.
