Former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will be on the ballot in Virginia despite his pledge to remove his name from ballots in “10 battleground states.”
The Virginia Department of Elections approved Kennedy’s placement on the November 2024 general election ballot while informing independent candidate Cornel West that he did not qualify, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported.
Election officials said West did not file the necessary paperwork.
Mark Rozell, dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, told the Times-Dispatch that West’s exclusion from the Virginia ballot is “significant.”
“This is one of those things that flies under the radar for many people, but it is a potentially critical factor in the outcome of the election in some places,” he said.
The candidates who qualified for 2024 ballot placement in Virginia include Kennedy, Trump, Vice President Kamala Harris, Green Party candidate Jill Stein, and Libertarian Party candidate Chase Oliver. Election officials must still review the forms of three other third-party candidates who could still make it on the ballot, according to the Times-Dispatch.
Virginia state Democratic Party chair Susan Swecker wasn’t concerned with the election officials’ decisions, arguing that neither Kennedy’s inclusion nor West’s exclusion from the ballot would affect the results in Virginia.
“The bottom line is it doesn’t change anything. They’re not serious candidates and we’ve got serious voters in Virginia,” she said.
Kennedy has also failed to get his name removed from ballots in the battleground states of Michigan and Wisconsin.
Last week, the former Democrat-turned-independent suspended his campaign and endorsed Republican Donald Trump.
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