RFK Jr. campaign refiles signatures in fresh Nevada ballot bid

LAS VEGAS — Independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign announced Friday it had submitted a “second round” of 30,000 signatures in a bid to get on the Nevada ballot ahead of the Nov. 5 general election.

The latest attempt followed the invalidation of Kennedy’s first round of petitions because they lacked the name of his running mate, Nicole Shanahan.

RFK Jr.’s campaign argued Nevada’s rules do not require a running mate to be named on ballot petitions, and accused state Secretary of State Francisco V. Aguilar of acting with “either rank incompetence or partisan political gamesmanship” in denying the earlier attempt.

A lawsuit filed by the campaign against Aguilar, an elected Democrat, is pending in federal court.

“The voters of Nevada have, for a second time, demonstrated their enthusiasm and determination to place Kennedy on Nevada’s general election ballot,” campaign attorney Paul Rossi said in a statement.

An Aguilar spokesperson said voter registrars in each of the state’s 22 counties have four business days to submit a “raw count” of the number of signatures collected.

If the total number is greater than the required 10,095 signatures for an independent to reach the ballot, each county will be told how many signatures have to be verified for the petitions to be accepted — a process that must be completed within nine business days.

“Gathering signatures for a second time gave us a unique perspective,” Kennedy campaign Nevada state director Randell Hynes said. “We learned many more Nevadans knew Kennedy was running. We also had hundreds of thousands of face-to-face conversations we would not have had otherwise.”

Friday’s filing comes two weeks after a pair of Nevada voters, one of whom is a vice chair of the state Democratic Party, sued Aguilar claiming Kennedy is not a true “independent” candidate because he has accepted nominations from minor parties in order to appear on the ballot in other states.

That case is ongoing.

The RealClearPolitics polling average shows Kennedy receiving 7.8% of the vote in the Silver State, well behind Donald Trump (43.8%) and President Biden (38.8%).