Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said his campaign has collected enough signatures to get a new party on the ballot for North Carolina's General Election in November. His campaign said he will run as the presidential candidate for the new party.
"In North Carolina, supporters formed 'We The People,' a new political party that will run RFK Jr. in the state. The campaign collected more than 23,000 signatures, including a buffer of over 60%," the campaign said in a news release Monday.
The new We the People party has until May 17 to submit it's signatures to county boards of elections to be considered as a new political party in North Carolina, according to Patrick Gannon, spokesman for the State Board of Elections.
"The proposed party must collect 13,865 valid signatures of registered voters, including at least 200 voters from each of three congressional districts in N.C.," Gannon said in an email.
County election boards will check the signatures and then return them to We the People, and then they have to be submitted to the State Board of Elections by June 3, Gannon said.
"As of April 1, the State Board has not received any signatures from We The People," he said. "If and when it receives the signatures, the State Board would then review the submission and determine whether the petition meets the legal requirements."
If the State Board of Elections recognizes the new party, We the People could then nominate candidates for the ballot at a convention.
By creating a new party, the number of signatures needed was much lower than if Kennedy tried to get on the ballot as an independent candidate.
State election rules say independent candidates have to collect signatures to get on the ballot, with the number depending on the race. In the presidential race, that is 1.5% of the total number of voters in the last election for governor.
In North Carolina's 2020 gubernatorial race, about 5.5 million voters cast ballots. That means Kennedy's campaign would have had to collect more than 83,000 signatures to get him on the ballot as an independent candidate.
Kennedy recently announced that Nicole Shanahan would be his running mate. Shanahan, 38, is a wealthy lawyer and philanthropist in California, but not nationally known, according to the Associated Press.
Kennedy's campaign has so far gotten on the ballot in Utah and says it has enough signatures to get on the ballots in Arizona, Nevada and Georgia, the AP reports.
The former Democrat, son of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, has become known for spreading conspiracy theories, particularly around COVID-19 vaccines.