The Nevada Democratic Party is seeking to invalidate the Green Party’s effort to land on the state’s November ballot, arguing it did not gather enough valid signatures to gain ballot access.
The Green Party has not been on a Nevada general election ballot since 2008, when its candidate received around 1,400 votes. Including a qualified minor party on the ballot — one potentially able to pull dissatisfied left-leaning voters away from the Democratic Party — could have major impacts on the presidential race in Nevada, where President Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in 2020 by only about 33,000 votes out of more than a million cast.
The Green Party gathered nearly 30,000 petition signatures to land on the general election ballot, well more than the required amount of 10,095 signatures, which must be split evenly across Nevada’s four congressional districts. The party announced Monday that “as of this moment, the Nevada Green Party is on the Ballot.” The party has not submitted a candidate yet for the November ballot, but the party's former presidential candidate Jill Stein is running again this year. Stein called the lawsuit “outrageous” in a video posted to her campaign website.
Lawyers representing the Nevada Democratic Party filed public records requests to review the Green Party’s submitted signatures and petition, but the lawsuit said they had only received a handful of signatures and no copies of the petition.
“We have filed this challenge to preserve our rights to inspect the petitions consistent with Nevada state law,” Hilary Barrett, the executive director of the Nevada Democratic Party, said in a statement.
