Two independent candidates for president, Cornel West and Claudia De la Cruz, vowed to continue fighting to stay on Georgia’s ballot after Fulton County judges disqualified them.
Both were declared ineligible by two judges in separate rulings handed down Wednesday, but the campaigns plan to appeal.
”We believe this ruling defies logic and expect it will be overturned on appeal,” said Edwin DeJesus, who is with the West campaign. “The conclusion reached is frankly ludicrous. The campaign remains optimistic about the end result we will achieve.”
Estevan Hernandez, co-chair of De la Cruz’s campaign in Georgia, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Thursday that the campaign plans to appeal and attacked Democrats for blocking its path.
”This is the result of an effort by the Democratic Party to sabotage democratic rights of Georgia voters at the very moment that they say that the 2024 election is about democracy itself,” Hernandez said in a statement. “This is an example of extreme hypocrisy by the Democratic Party establishment.”
With the court fight likely to continue, it is unclear how many candidates voters will be able to choose from besides Democrat Kamala Harris, Republican Donald Trump, Libertarian Chase Oliver and Green Party candidate Jill Stein.
The rulings to disqualify West and De la Cruz narrow the voters’ choices less than two months before Election Day. The Democratic Party of Georgia challenged their candidacies, fearing they’d siphon votes from Harris, while the Republican Party fought to keep the liberal West and socialist De la Cruz on the ballot.
The Georgia Democratic Party didn’t comment Thursday.
While the court rulings mean votes for West and De la Cruz wouldn’t count, it already may be too late to remove their names from ballots. Notices would be posted in polling places warning voters that West and De la Cruz have been disqualified.
More than 110 of Georgia’s 159 counties already have printed ballots with the minor candidates’ names.
“It would be extremely difficult to reprint ballot(s) and remove Dr. West as an option before the election,” Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thomas Cox Jr. wrote in his decision. “This court finds that there is insufficient time to strike the candidate’s name or reprint the ballots.”
Meanwhile, a separate ruling by Cox kept Stein as a qualified candidate under a new state law that allows third-party candidates if they’re also on the ballot in at least 20 other states.
Superior Court Judge Emily Richardson handed down the decision disqualifying De la Cruz.
The judges reversed decisions by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who had sought to include West and De la Cruz among presidential candidates. Raffensperger had added them to the ballot last month, overruling a recommendation by an administrative law judge.
“Partisan activists are attempting to tilt the scales of this election, and I believe that is wrong,” Raffensperger said Thursday. “The law is clear, and these qualified candidates have a right to be on Georgia’s ballot, and I will fight for voters’ rights every day to choose the candidate for whom they want to elect.”
The two judges found both independent candidates failed to follow state laws to appear on the ballot.
Independent candidates must gather more than 7,500 signatures to qualify — both candidates did so — but state law requires those signatures to be submitted in the name of at least one of their 16 potential Georgia electors to the Electoral College. None of their presidential electors met that requirement, the judges ruled.
That does not mean the legal battle is over, as both cases could be appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court. Court disputes over independent candidates potentially could continue all the way until Election Day on Nov. 5.
Last month, Raffensperger overruled a Georgia administrative law judge and sought a presidential ballot with six names: Harris, Trump, Oliver, West, Stein and De la Cruz, the candidate of the Party for Socialism and Liberation who sought to qualify in Georgia as an independent.
Georgia voters will not see independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the ballot after he withdrew from the race and endorsed Trump.
Joe Biden beat Trump by fewer than 12,000 votes in Georgia’s 2020 general election. In what’s expected to be another close race between Harris and Trump, every vote could matter.
