CHARLESTON — Independent candidate for president Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will be on the 2024 general election ballot in West Virginia.
Secretary of State’s Office Chief Deputy and Chief of Staff Deak Kersey said Tuesday Kennedy has enough valid signatures.
To be granted ballot access, the Kennedy camp had to secure signatures from registered voters that totaled 1% of the votes cast for that office in the previous election cycle, Kersey said.
“The requisite number of signatures is 1% of the votes cast for that office in the last election,” Kersey said Tuesday on MetroNews “Talkline.” “So in this case, in the 2020 General Election, there were 794,000 votes cast.”
According to Kersey, Kennedy supporters collected signatures across the state and to process the signatures in a timely fashion, officials used a state law allowing them to decentralize the process and get help from county clerks in each county.
“The counties have returned about 10,000 verified signatures of the 18,000 that were submitted,” Kersey said. “They haven’t counted all of them yet but he is over the threshold so he will be on the ballot. “Processing and verifying the signatures requires a manual inspection of each voter registration. Elections workers scrutinize each signature to make sure ballot access is fair and properly managed.
“This is a lot of blue-collar work,” Kersey said. “They have to look up every voter in the Voter Registration System and pull up the signature image and match that with the petition.”
As of Tuesday, presidential candidates on the West Virginia ballot include Kennedy as an independent, former President Donald Trump, a Republican, Libertarian Chase Oliver and Green Party nominee Jill Stein. Kersey said the Democratic Party is required to complete the final form following their convention scheduled to begin next week to get Vice President Kamala Harris on the ballot.
“It’s my understanding they have held that convention, and it may have been telephonic prior to the convention to satisfy some of the states,” Kersey said. “We just haven’t received it yet.”
