politics
PHOENIX (AP) – Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has long argued that that is his biggest hurdle Presidential campaign believes that independent candidates cannot win. He checked out it Debates as a singular opportunity to face side by side Joe Biden And Donald Trump in front of an enormous audience.
But to try this first phase of debateHe must secure a spot on the ballot in no less than a dozen more states and improve his ends in statewide polls in a month.
With a famous name and a loyal base, Kennedy has the potential to do higher than any third presidential candidate since Ross Perot within the Nineteen Nineties. Both the Biden and Trump campaigns, fearful that he could play spoilsport, bypassed the non-partisan debate commission and agreed to a schedule that leaves Kennedy with little or no time to qualify for the primary debate.
Kennedy publicly expresses his confidence that he can do it.
“I look forward to holding Presidents Biden and Trump accountable for their record in Atlanta on June 27 to give Americans the debate they deserve,” he wrote on the X platform.
According to CNN, candidates might be invited in the event that they have secured a spot on the ballot in states with no less than 270 Electoral College votes, the minimum needed to win the presidency, and 15 in 4 reliable polls released since March 13 % have achieved The criteria are the identical as those of the Commission on Presidential Debates, the nonpartisan group that has organized debates since 1988, except that the commission's first debate would have taken place in September, which might have given Kennedy more time.
Kennedy doesn’t appear to have met the poll criteria yet, although he has polled at 15% or higher in no less than two polls that meet CNN standards.
The hurdle to ballot access is even tougher.
State officials have confirmed Kennedy's place on the ballot in Delaware, Oklahoma and Utah, which together have just 16 electoral votes. In California, Hawaii and Michigan, minor parties selected Kennedy as their candidate, effectively abandoning existing options, although the states didn’t officially confirm Kennedy's position. Adding them would bring Kennedy's total to 89 electoral votes, even though it's not clear whether his position in those states would meet CNN's criteria.
Kennedy's campaign says he has collected enough signatures in Idaho, Iowa, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas, states with a complete of 112 electoral votes. But either he hasn't submitted the signatures or they haven't yet been certified by the state's election officials.
These states still only have 201 electoral votes.
Independent candidates like Kennedy face a maze of laws that change widely from state to state but generally require tons of or 1000’s of signatures and adherence to strict deadlines.
The patchwork of laws is stuffed with pitfalls. And the Democratic National Committee has pledged to review Kennedy's filings for errors that might keep him off the ballot or no less than tie up money and time for his campaign.
Kennedy, for his part, has resorted to secrecy and artistic tactics in a game of cat-and-mouse to get on the ballot before his critics can thwart him. In California, Delaware and Michigan, Kennedy allied with little-known existing parties and won their nominations. In Hawaii he formed his own political party to nominate him, and in Mississippi and North Carolina he pursued the same strategy.
Elsewhere, he waits to submit signatures until the deadline to offer critics time to comb through them in search of errors. If he were to enter the controversy next month, he would almost actually need to change his strategy and submit the petitions he’s sitting on as quickly as possible.
The signatures have to be submitted in New York by May 28, which might bring Kennedy 28 votes closer if certified on time. He could then attempt to make an all-out push in various states with relatively easy requirements — many require 5,000 or fewer signatures, but they typically don't usher in many electoral votes — or concentrate on larger states like Illinois, which has 19 electoral votes or Florida at 30.
To make matters worse, some states will not be yet accepting applications from potential independent candidates and won’t achieve this before the primary debate.
Kennedy's vice-presidential candidate Nicole Shanahan, who’s divorced from Google co-founder Sergei Brin, has committed $8 million of her personal fortune to ballot access, the campaign announced Thursday, saying her $15 million effort was ” fully funded.”
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