ALBANY, N.Y. -- This year, the New York Green Party, along with presidential candidate Jill Stein's campaign, said it spent at least $370,000 in an attempt to get Stein on the ballot.

Party co-chair Gloria Mattera said roughly 100 paid petitioners and volunteers collected more than 42,000 signatures in about six weeks.

"It was an unprecedented effort," she said.

And yet it came up short.

Before the 2020 election the state changed the threshold for third parties without automatic ballot access to get on the ballot from 15,000 signatures to 45,000.

"It's undemocratic and there's an effort of providing voters with a minimal amount of choice. That's what the Democrats primarily wanted to do," Mattera said.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s campaign said it spent more than $1 million to collect more than 135,000 signatures. However, a case challenging those signatures over questions about Kennedy's listed address concluded Thursday with a judge expected to issue a decision soon.

"We are saying, get rid of the 150,000 New Yorkers who want him on the ballot, who want him as an option or choice because some form has something wrong. (It's) utterly arbitrary, unconstitutional, an embarrassment," political activist Larry Sharpe said.

Sharpe ran for governor in New York in 2018 on the Libertarian Party line. In 2022, he collected independent nominating petitions to run again but the petitions did not hold up in court.

He said what is happening to RFK is the same as what happened to him but it's of even more importance because of the national implications.

"An independent who obviously has less resources has to spend $1 million for just one state," Sharpe said. "This is so obviously unfair. So obviously dumb."

Kennedy's campaign is challenging a number of election laws, including the signature threshold, it says is too burdensome for independent candidates. This week, both the Green Party and Libertarian Party petitioned to join the federal lawsuit.

Green Party attorney Candace Carpenter said if RFK remains on the ballot the litigation should continue.

"I believe RFK invited us to join for that reason because if he is not knocked off the ballot, he actually in a principled way believes that New York State's law is designed to keep independent parties off the ballot which it obviously is," she said.

The Green and Libertarian parties unsuccessfully challenged the ballot access changes several years ago.  However, they said while the courts ruled the law is constitutional on its face, this time they have numbers, including the amount of money they have spent to show that it is functionally restricting voter choice.