Utah agrees to push back ballot signature deadline following lawsuit from RFK Jr.

SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has more time to make his way onto the Utah ballot in the 2024 presidential election after Utah officials agreed to extend the deadline for independent candidates to submit the required petition signatures.

On Monday, Kennedy’s campaign filed a lawsuit against Lt. Gov. Diedre Henderson and Utah Director of Elections Ryan Cowley, claiming the state’s Jan. 8 deadline for third-party candidates was unconstitutional.

RFK Jr.’s campaign sues Utah over early deadline for ballot access requirements

According to court documents, Kennedy’s campaign needed to collect and verify 1,000 signatures and file the certificate of nomination with Henderson’s office in order to appear on the ballot. The lawsuit claimed this was unconstitutional as it impaired independent candidates from ballot access, as getting so many signatures nearly a year before an election is prohibitively difficult.

The lawsuit sought the court to issue an injunction extending the deadline until August. That was the month the deadline was set ahead of the 2020 election. Since then, however, the Utah Legislature has pushed the date up to early January for all candidates.

According to the Kennedy campaign, an agreement reached Thursday with Henderson’s office provides at least an additional 60 days for RFK Jr. to get the signatures and file the certificate, saying they will not reject any unaffiliated certificates simply because they were not filed by Jan. 8. A new deadline has been set for “at least” March 5.

“I am pleased Lt. Gov. Henderson had the courage to correct the wrong committed by the state legislature in their intentional assault on the constitutional right of Utah voters to cast their vote for Mr. Kennedy in 2024,” said the Kennedy campaign’s legal counsel Paul Rossi, in a statement.

Henderson released a statement Thursday saying the agreement was made “in the spirit of affording every reasonable opportunity for unaffiliated presidential candidates to participate in our general election.”

She added that key local legislators are aware of the potential problems with the current statute requiring all presidential candidates to submit signatures in January. “I am confident these issues will be addressed in the upcoming legislative session,” Henderson said.

Kennedy’s campaign has already started gathering signatures in Utah. Last week, RFK Jr. held a rally in Salt Lake City, where he was working to amass signatures from supporters. The environmental lawyer initially planned to run in the Democratic primary but has since opted for an independent run. He has recently come under scrutiny for allegedly peddling conspiracy theories about COVID-19.

Stefanie Spear, Kennedy’s press secretary, said the campaign is also working to collect petition signatures in several other states.

“We have a robust ballot-access and legal team and Kennedy’s name will be on the ballot in all 50 states,” she said.

The New York Times reported recently that the super PAC backing Kennedy is planning to spend millions of dollars over the coming months in order to get the independent candidate on the ballot in 10 states — several of which surround Utah, such as Arizona, Colorado, and Nevada.

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