(Bloomberg) -- The US Supreme Court refused to order Nevada officials to include Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein on the November ballot, buttressing Democrat Kamala Harris in a potentially pivotal state.
The justices without explanation left in force a Nevada Supreme Court decision that said the party failed to comply with a key requirement in gathering the signatures needed to put Stein on the ballot. The order didn’t indicate that any justices dissented.
The rebuff is a win for the Nevada Democratic Party, which sued to block Stein from the ballot amid the possibility she might siphon votes away from Harris.
It’s a setback for Republican Donald Trump’s campaign. Although the ex-president wasn’t directly involved in the case, the Green Party was represented by Jay Sekulow, who has served as one of Trump’s personal lawyers.
The Nevada court said the Green Party didn’t include the required affidavit attesting that each signatory was a registered voter in that person’s county of residence. The Green Party blamed the government for the misstep, saying the Nevada secretary of state’s office mistakenly told the campaign to use the wrong form in collecting signatures.
Sekulow argued unsuccessfully in his emergency request that Green Party presidential and vice presidential candidates had been “wrongfully ripped from the ballot.”
Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar joined the Democratic Party in urging the Supreme Court to reject the request. Aguilar, a Democrat, argued it was too close to the election for the court to intervene.
Aguilar said officials had already begun printing ballots in the face of a Sept. 20 deadline under state law to send them to overseas military voters. At least one county clerk has already sent out ballots to military and out-of-state voters, he said in his Sept. 17 filing.
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority had previously said federal judges should be wary of changing election rules right before an election because of the risk of voter confusion.
The case is Nevada Green Party v. Aguilar, 24A262.
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