Monday was a huge win for the North Carolina Green Party. After the party was removed from the ballot in 2021, conducted a petition effort to return and filed a First Amendment rights lawsuit, the leftist third party was unanimously certified by the North Carolina Board of Elections Monday morning. While North Carolina’s filing period concluded July 1, there’s still a chance a judge will extend the deadline so that the party will be able to field candidates in the 2022 election.
It was a win that was immediately met with pushback from the North Carolina’s Democratic Party, which announced it intends to file a lawsuit in state court over the board’s decision. The Democrats allege that the state is ignoring its own ongoing investigation into the party amid allegations of fraudulent signatures.
In making this allegation, Democrats ignored a major point from Monday’s board decision: even with the questionable signatures, the party still has 1,600 people more than needed to make its way onto the ballot. The 100 county boards of elections were required to validate all the signatures they received. That information was given to the state board. The state board decided unanimously that the party was good to proceed.
“It’s disappointing that a party that calls itself the Democratic Party would engage in this blatant anti-democratic effort to suppress voter choice,” Green Party lawyer Oliver Hall told the News & Observer.
We agree. If Democrats are campaigning on saving democracy, as many are in this election, they shouldn’t simultaneously try to take down another party simply petitioning to be on the ballot.
It isn’t the first tactic the Democrats have used against the Green Party. In June, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (an arm of the national party) began calling petitioners advocating for the Green Party’s inclusion on the ballot, asking them to remove their names in favor of backing Democratic candidates. One of these requests even went to Matthew Hoh, the Green Party’s likely nominee for U.S. Senate.
North Carolina Republicans, for their part, have been supporting the Green Party. The DSCC’s GOP counterpart, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, filed an amicus brief on behalf of the Green Party in its federal lawsuit against the Board of Elections, saying that “the Green Party presents a separate option for left-leaning voters in the General Election.”
This support seems slightly disingenuous, given how North Carolina Republicans have actively and consistently pursued restrictive legislation that disproportionately affects voters who traditionally support Democrats. Republicans would benefit from progressives choosing to vote for a third party candidate, of course. But whatever their motives are in this case, they aren’t wrong.
It seems like the fight over North Carolina’s Green Party is a political proxy war between Republicans and Democrats. The Senate race between Republican nominee Ted Budd and Democrat Cheri Beasley is tightening; what was once a right-leaning race has veered closer to the middle in recent polls, and Beasley’s fundraising efforts have been paying off. There’s the potential for a supermajority in the General Assembly. Democrats see the almost 14,000 signatures the Green Party needed as 14,000 fewer votes for them. Republicans see it as 14,000 votes they might not have to worry about.
Each party may want to emphasize noble reasons behind their Green Party maneuvering — whether it’s examining fraudulent signatures or ensuring everyone has a choice — but at the end of the day, it’s likely that the only people who genuinely care about the Green Party’s place on the ballot are the party’s members themselves.
In this fight, however, it’s Democrats who are trying to keep legitimate candidates off the ballot in North Carolina. Trying to take down the Green Party may help Democrats win this election, but it’ll further erode the democracy they say they’re fighting for.
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