Cornel West cleared to appear on ballot in Maine, where ranked voting is in play

AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) — Independent presidential candidate Cornel West can appear on the ballot in Maine, the state’s secretary of state has ruled.

Shenna Bellows’ decision came Tuesday, about a week after the withdrawal of a challenge to another long-shot candidate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The presence of multiple third-party candidates on the Maine ballot is potentially significant because the state uses ranked choice voting to determine a winner.

Bellows ruled that some signatures in support of West were gathered fraudulently but that there was a significant number of valid signatures for the candidate to appear on the ballot. She said in a statement that “the bad actions of one should not impugn the valid First Amendment rights of the many.”

In ranked choice voting, voters rank their choice of candidate by ordered preference, with those rankings used to determine a winner in the event no candidate wins a majority of ballots on which they appear as voters’ first preference.

Maine is also one of two states that apportions electoral votes by congressional district. The Democratic candidate consistently wins the statewide vote, but the rural 2nd Congressional District has gone to former President Donald Trump twice in a row. Multiple third-party candidates could change the complexion of the race for that vote.

Maine residents filed two separate challenges against West’s ballot access in the state in July. The challengers can appeal the decision in court within five days, Bellows said.

The challengers also alleged that state and local election officials made errors in certifying the signatures for West. However, Bellows found that officials “acted appropriately in certifying signatures for voters that they could verify regardless of whether a voter signed with a nickname or dated the petition with the day and month only.”

West is a leftist academic and progressive activist. Republicans in Arizona and other states have sought to keep him on the ballot amid Democratic fears he could siphon votes from Vice President Kamala Harris.

In the battleground state of Pennsylvania, a lawyer with longstanding ties to Republican Party candidates and causes went to court in recent days to argue that the secretary of state’s office was wrong to reject West’s paperwork to get on the ballot. The office says the paperwork lacked the required affidavits for 14 of the 19 presidential electors by the Aug. 1 deadline.

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Associated Press reporter Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, contributed to this report.