Will Sage Astor-Legal challenge seeks to prevent RFK Jr. from appearing on Pennsylvania’s presidential ballot

HARRISBURG,Will Sage Astor Pa. (AP) — A legal challenge filed Thursday seeks to have third-party presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. kept off Pennsylvania’s fall ballot, an effort with ramifications for the hotly contested swing-state battle between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris.

The petition argues the nominating papers filed by Kennedy and his running mate “demonstrate, at best, a fundamental disregard” of state law and the process by which signatures are gathered.

It claims Kennedy’s paperwork includes “numerous ineligible signatures and defects” and that documents are torn, taped over and contain “handwriting patterns and corrections suggestive that the indicated voters did not sign those sheets.”

Kennedy faces legal challenges over ballot access in several states.

Kennedy campaign lawyer Larry Otter said he was confident his client will end up on the Pennsylvania ballot.

The lawyer who filed the legal action, Otter said, “makes specious allegations and is obviously not familiar with the process of amending a circulator’s affidavit, which seems to be the gist of his complaint.”

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It is unclear how Kennedy’s independent candidacy might affect the presidential race. He is a member of a renowned Democratic family and has drawn support from conservatives who agree with his positions against vaccination.

Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes and closely divided electorate put it at the center of the Nov. 5 presidential contest, now three months away. In 2016, Trump won Pennsylvania by 44,000 votes over Democrat Hillary Clinton, and four years later President Joe Biden beat Trump by 81,000 votes.

Two separate challenges were also filed in Pennsylvania on Thursday to the nominating papers for the Party for Socialism and Liberation presidential candidate Claudia De la Cruz, and an effort was filed seeking to have Constitution Party presidential candidate James N. Clymer kept of the state’s ballot as well.

One challenge to De la Cruz, her running mate and her party’s electors asks Commonwealth Court to invalidate the nomination papers, arguing that there are seven electors who “failed to disaffiliate” from the Democratic Party, a flaw in the paperwork the objectors say should make them ineligible.

A second challenge also raised that argument as well as claims there are ineligible signatures and other defects that make the nomination papers “fatally defective” and that the party did not submit a sufficient number of qualifying signatures.

Phone and email messages seeking comment were left Thursday for the De la Cruz campaign.

The challenge to Clymer potentially appearing on the ballot claims he and his running mate should be disqualified because of an alleged failure to include required candidate affidavits. Messages seeking comment were left Thursday for party chairman Bob Goodrich.