Longshot presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s lawsuit against Secretary of State Shenna Bellows was dismissed by a federal judge on Monday.
Kennedy, the scion of the famed Democratic family running an independent campaign as an alternative to President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, filed the lawsuit in February after his campaign was barred from collecting signatures from voters during the March 5 presidential primaries.
Bellows, a Democrat, cited a provision in state law that prohibits people from trying to influence voters’ decisions regarding a candidate for an office that is on the ballot that day within 250 feet of a polling place. She said Kennedy’s campaign would be allowed to collect signatures during the state and congressional primaries being held on June 11.
Lawyers representing Kennedy’s campaign shot back by saying they did not know of that law ever being enforced in Maine. The day before the March primaries, U.S. District Court Justice John A. Woodcock Jr. rejected Kennedy’s bid for an injunction allowing the campaign to collect signatures at Maine polling places.
Bellows’ office asked Woodcock to dismiss the lawsuit in mid-March. A response from Kennedy’s team was due in April, but it missed that filing deadline. On Monday, Woodcock dismissed the lawsuit on procedural ground while accepting Bellows’ arguments.
Kennedy’s campaign is still pushing to make the ballot in all 50 states by the end of July, though it is an arduous process. He has already qualified in the battleground state of Michigan, increasing his chances of affecting the election chiefly between Biden, a Democrat, and Trump, a Republican who is leading in early polls of the race.
To make the Maine ballot, independent presidential candidates need to gather at least 4,000 signatures from registered voters. The signatures must be submitted to municipal clerks for certification by July 25, and they are due to Bellows’ office a week later.
