ELECTION LATEST: Trump’s new fundraising deal will send money to PAC to pay legal costs before party.

The legal offensive, led by Dana Remus, who served as President Biden’s general counsel until 2022, and the party’s outside counsel, Robert Lenhardt, is a candidate Democrats fear could give spoilers to Biden. will be supported by a communications team dedicated to countering the .Biden. It amounts to a kind of legal whack-a-mole, with state-by-state counter-insurgency plans developed ahead of elections that could hinge on just a few thousand votes in battleground states.

The goal is “to make sure all candidates are following the rules and to hold them accountable when they aren’t,” Lenhardt said.

Third-party candidates have dogged the Democratic Party in recent presidential elections. Ralph Nader is widely blamed for stealing the White House from Al Gore in 2000, and within the party, Green Party candidate Jill Stein took votes from Hillary Clinton in 2016. He lost to Trump by a narrow margin in battleground states where some argue he lost.

There has been little third-party activity in 2020, and it is unclear what impact the potential presence of these candidates on this year’s ballot will have. But concerns among Democrats are particularly acute this year, with polls showing Trump’s support base to be far more entrenched than Biden’s, meaning some of the president’s voters are likely to be replaced. This means that there is a possibility that the proposal will be accepted.

Still, it’s hard to know whether an outsider candidate, especially Kennedy, will receive more support from the Trump or Biden camps. The current conventional wisdom within the Democratic Party is that votes other than Biden will be favorable to Trump, and there are concerns that giving people more choices on the ballot is likely to have a negative impact on Biden. There is.

Accessing the presidential ballot is a complex and expensive process for candidates, especially those who are not affiliated with a political party, even a small party. Laws vary from state to state, with some requiring only fees and a few thousand signatures, while others require gathering tens of thousands of signatures under the pressure of tight deadlines and other administrative hurdles. .

State rules restricting access to ballots “ensure that the people on the ballot have a legitimate base of support and this is not just a vanity project,” Lenhardt said. said.

Independent candidates and third-party leaders have called restrictive voting laws and efforts to monitor and enforce them anti-democratic and the two-party system they say they are trying to fight. It is seen as an example of a political conspiracy.

“What are the barriers to access to the ballot? They are barriers to free speech,” said Nader, a four-time third-party presidential candidate. He described US state voting laws as “by an order of magnitude the worst in the Western world.”

Gauging the popularity of third-party and independent candidates is a challenge for pollsters. If they are not listed in the poll, of course their support will not be counted. But data shows that when polls include them, the results tend to significantly overestimate their support.

Opinion polls have shown that a significant number of American voters have no expectations for either Biden or Trump.

In recent months, Democrats have shown less interest in No Labels, a political group that had promised to run as a centrist candidate for president. The group said voting is underway in 18 states, but it is having trouble finding viable candidates.

Instead, much of the Democratic Party’s energy and concern has focused on Mr. Kennedy, 70, who first challenged Mr. Biden in the primary before announcing an independent presidential bid. Mr. Kennedy, an environmental lawyer and scion of one of America’s great political families, has gained further notoriety in recent years for promoting anti-vaccine falsehoods, conspiracy theories, and a broadly anti-establishment, anti-corporate ethos. I raised it. He has name recognition and donors.

A recent FOX News national poll shows Kennedy’s approval rating at about 13%, with the approval ratings for the two candidates at about the same level. Recent polls have given him an average of about 6% of the vote in Georgia, which is considered a battleground state in national elections, according to FiveThirtyEight polling averages.

Kennedy’s campaign says he is officially on the ballot in only one state, Utah, and has not yet submitted ballots in New Hampshire, Hawaii and Nevada, also considered key battleground states this year. You are trying to have enough signatures to access it.

A super PAC supporting Mr. Kennedy said it had collected enough signatures to put him on the ballot not only in South Carolina, but also in Arizona, Michigan and Georgia, all battleground states. In February, Democrats filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission alleging that the PAC and the Kennedy campaign illegally coordinated signature drives.

American Values ​​2024, which last year pledged to spend up to $15 million on ballot access efforts on Kennedy’s behalf, announced last week that it would no longer participate in the signature-gathering process.

Tony Lyons, the group’s co-founder, said the two parties “try to interfere with the constitutional rights of American voters who overwhelmingly want to vote for independent candidates.” He said he would continue his fight.

While Lenhardt’s team is working to vet third-party candidates for possible FEC violations, Democrats see ballot access as a key issue for police, and the party’s legal team has analyzed We are mobilizing local subdivisions of lawyers from across the country, along with teams, investigative teams, and field teams. .

Most states require independent candidates to get thousands of signatures to fill out the ballot, and states like Texas and New York require more than 100,000 names. There is also.

A small number of states require the vice president to be present to ensure access to the ballot.

In some states, the quickest way for independent candidates to get on the ballot is to form a new political party.

Kennedy and his supporters have formed a political party called “We the People,” and his campaign claims he will be on the ballot in California, Delaware, Hawaii, Mississippi and North Carolina. There is. Mr. West’s supporters formed the Justice for All party to secure voting lines in at least five states.

Lenhardt said the efforts of these new parties would be monitored and that “to the extent that they seek status as a new political party, they are actually a political party, a group of people who believe what they believe, not just a political party.” He said he would guarantee that. A single candidate who wants to circumvent existing rules. ”

Mr. West will be able to access the vote in some states through existing small parties, some of which already have lines on the ballot. His name will appear as a candidate for the Progressive Party in Oregon. In South Carolina, it’s the United Citizens Party. In Alaska, he has a party of Aurora parties. West is on Utah’s ballot as an independent.

“We don’t know yet that the Democratic National Committee has turned against us,” said Edwin DeJesus of West’s campaign. Director of Ballot Access. “They’ll probably surface spoiler stories closer to the election.”

Before becoming an independent, Mr West was initially a candidate for the Green Party, and candidates will be nominated at the party’s virtual conference in July. Mr. Stein is seeking nomination again.

Green Party President Gloria Mattera said the party was on the ballot in 2020. Petitions and lawsuits are ongoing in the state, the District of Columbia, and other jurisdictions.

In February, the Green Party was deemed eligible to vote in Wisconsin, a state where Mr. Stein received more than 31,000 votes in 2016, a state that Mr. Clinton and Mr. Trump won in the state. The vote margin exceeded that of Mr. .

Other third-party leaders and candidates, including Mr. Matera and Mr. Nader, dispute claims that outsider candidates are siphoning votes from Democrats, saying many prefer independent or alternative party candidates. People said they simply wouldn’t vote if they didn’t have that option. .

They think of it as providing choice.

“Our people are not going to support an incumbent,” DeJesus said. “Biden was never going to get those votes. We’re giving people a reason to go to the ballot box.”

Ruth Igielnik, Alyce McFadden and Taylor Robinson contributed reporting.