Supreme Court Won’t Restore Green Party to Nevada Ballot

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Nevada Democrats previously succeeded in removing Greens from the ballot.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected on Sept. 20 the Green Party’s request to restore its candidates to the state ballot for the Nov. 5 election.

The new ruling was made after the Nevada Supreme Court ruled 5–2 on Sept. 6 that the party’s candidates could not appear on the ballot because they used the wrong form when gathering ballot-access signatures from the public. The ruling also follows the Nevada State Democratic Party’s challenge of signatures that would have permitted Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein to appear on the ballot.

No justices dissented from the new order, nor did they explain why they denied the Green Party’s request.

The Nevada State Democratic Party sued in June to keep the Green Party from the ballot, contesting the validity of petition signatures because of the form, which was intended for initiatives and referendums and not for a minor party to gain ballot access.

The emergency application was filed with the U.S. Supreme Court on Sept. 13 after the Nevada Supreme Court overturned a lower court ruling placing Green Party candidates on the ballot.

The Green Party argued that refusing its ballot access would violate its federal due process and equal protection rights under the U.S. Constitution. On Aug. 12, a state district court in Carson City denied the Democrats’ claims on state law grounds without ruling on the federal issues.

A divided Nevada Supreme Court reversed that ruling on Sept. 6, finding that the office of Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar had instructed the Nevada Green Party to use the wrong form. Although the court determined that the incident was “an unfortunate mistake,” that mistake did not rise to the level of a federal constitutional violation.

Nevada is a hotly contested battleground state in the current presidential election, and the presence of Stein on the ballot could influence the presidential election result in the state.

In 2020, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden, a Democrat, prevailed over President Donald Trump, a Republican, in Nevada by 33,596 votes, a margin of 2.4 percent. In 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton beat Trump by 27,202 votes, also a margin of 2.4 percent.

This is a developing story. It will be updated.