ATLANTA– Presidential Candidates Cornel West and Claudia De la Cruz are barred from running in Georgia’s presidential election, two state appeals court judges ruled Wednesday, saying their electors had not filed proper paperwork.
For now, the decision means votes for West and De la Cruz will not be counted in Georgia, even if their names are still on the ballots, because it is too late to remove them. Military and overseas ballots will be mailed out starting Tuesday.
Fulton County Superior Court Judges Thomas A. Cox Jr. and Emily Richardson ordered the state to post warnings at polling places that West and De la Cruz had been disqualified and that votes for them would be invalidated if their names were still on the ballot. This is a common remedy in Georgia for late-term election changes.
West ran as an independent in Georgia. De la Cruz is the Party of Socialism and Liberation nominee, but technically qualified for the Georgia ballot as an independent.
If the rulings stand, Georgia voters will have their choice of Republican Donald Trump, Democrat Kamala Harris, Libertarian Chase Oliver and Green Party candidate Jill Stein, the most candidates since 2000.
Democrats, Republicans and Libertarians automatically qualify to run for election in Georgia.
Spokespeople for West and De la Cruz said they would appeal the decision to the Georgia Supreme Court.
“We are confident we will win the appeal,” Edwin DeJesus of the West campaign wrote in an email.
“We are appealing this decision that denies the fundamental democratic rights of the people of Georgia to vote for the candidate of their choice,” Estevan Hernandez, co-chair of De la Cruz’s Georgia campaign, said in a statement. “This is the result of the Democratic Party’s attempt to sabotage the democratic rights of Georgia voters at a time when they say the 2024 election is about democracy itself.”
Wednesday’s rulings were the latest twist in the on-and-off saga of ballot access for independent and third-party candidates in Georgia. administrative judge disqualified West, De la Cruz, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.and the Georgia Green Party from the ballot. But Raffensperger, who has the final say in such matters, overruled the judge and said West and De la Cruz should be allowed access.
Raffensperger also ruled that under a new law of GeorgiaStein should be on the Georgia ballot because the national Green Party had qualified her in at least 20 other states.
Kennedy’s name remained off the ballots because he withdrew his candidacy in Georgia and several other states after suspend his campaign and support Trump.
Democrats appealed Raffensperger’s decisions on West and De la Cruz and filed a new lawsuit challenging his decision on Stein, seeking to block candidates from stealing votes from Harris after Joe Biden won Georgia by fewer than 12,000 votes in 2020.
Cox dismissed the Democratic challenge to Stein’s inclusion on Wednesday, writing that Raffensperger “has a clear legal duty to allow the Unified Green Party to qualify candidates for the presidential primary election year and to allow those candidates access to the ballot for the November 4, 2024 general election.” If Democrats want to pursue the issue further, they must do so before an administrative law judge, Cox wrote.
The judge agreed with Democratic arguments that state law required at least one of West’s voters to file a petition with the required 7,500 signatures of registered voters in their own name. Instead, the petition was filed in West’s name alone.
“Although Dr. West needed only one presidential elector to qualify and grant him access to the ballot, none of his candidates met the requirements to do so,” Cox wrote.
Richardson made a similar statement against De la Cruz.
Georgia is one of several states where Democrats and allied groups have objected to third-party and independent candidates.
Republicans in Georgia stepped in and tried to keep all candidates on the ballot. That’s just one move in a Republican effort in all states of the battlefield to support liberal third-party candidates like West and Stein in an effort to hurt Harris. It’s not clear who’s paying for the effort. But it could matter in states that will be decided by a slim margin in the 2020 election.