July 16 (UPI) -- The North Carolina Board of Elections voted on Tuesday to allow Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to appear on November's presidential general election ballot but not Cornell West.
The board voted 4-1 to recognize Kennedy's We The People Party but appeared to have more questions about the signatures gathered on behalf of West's Justice For All Party.
State Republicans and some voting advocacy groups had accused Democrats of trying to improve President Joe Biden's chances by eliminating third-party candidates.
The group Clear Choice Action, which is affiliated with the state's Democratic Party, had filed complaints against both new parties and had disputed their method of gathering signatures and said they should not have been given ballot access.
Clear Choice's action had been sending text messages to eligible voters, asking them to question the motives of petition takers for Kennedy and West.
"The board is wrong to certify We The People," Pete Kavanaugh, the founder of Clear Choice Action and a former Biden campaign staffer, said, according to WRAL-TV. "Both of these candidates are attempting to play by a different set of rules than everyone else, and exempt themselves from the signature threshold required for an independent presidential candidate.
"These are two sham parties driven by Republican operatives that result from neither candidate being able to show the level of support required by North Carolina law to get on the ballot as an independent candidate."
