HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania — The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Friday agreed with lower courts’ decisions to bar two third-party presidential candidates from the ballot box in the pivotal state for the November election.
The decisions hand a victory to both major parties, as Democratic and Republican loyalists try to fend off third-party candidates for fear of siphoning votes away from their parties’ presidential candidates in a state crucial to the White House.
Pennsylvania is so important that the Republican candidate Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris have visited many of the states where margins of just tens of thousands of votes gave Democrat Joe Biden victory in 2020 and Trump victory in 2016.
The Constitution Party’s presidential candidate, James Clymer, who took on the role of interim candidate of the Conservative Party, and Claudia De la Cruz of the left-wing Party for Socialism and Liberation, were rejected from the November 5 ballot.
Judges in the state’s lower Commonwealth Court agreed with De la Cruz’s Democratic Party challengers and Clymer’s Republican Party challengers.
In the De la Cruz case, the judge found that seven of the party’s 19 presidential electors named in the papers were registered as Democrats, violating a political disaffiliation provision in the state law. State law prohibits minor party candidates from registering with a major political party within 30 days of the primary election.
In the Clymer case, the judge ruled that four of the party’s 19 electors had failed to file their candidate declarations by the August 1 deadline, as required.
Another lawsuit was underway on Friday: a Democratic-backed challenge to an independent presidential candidate Cornel Westa left-wing academic who got on the Pennsylvania ballot with the help of a lawyer with close ties to the Republican Party.
So far, two third-party candidates have managed to get on the Pennsylvania ballot. The Green Party Jill Stein and Chase Oliver of the Libertarian Party filed petitions to get on the Pennsylvania presidential ballot uncontested.
Formerly an independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspended his campaign, endorsed Donald Trump and he abandoned his efforts to fend off a lawsuit challenging his candidacy documents.
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Follow Marc Levy on https://x.com/timelywriter.