Kennedy and West third-party ballot drives are pushed by secretive groups and Republican donors

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WASHINGTON — Libertarians in Colorado want to put Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the ballot to create chaos.

Petition drives for Cornel West in Virginia and North Carolina are being run by groups with Republican ties.

And in Arizona, a convicted fraudster who's been repeatedly investigated for using deceptive tactics to gather signatures for conservative groups is also working on West's behalf.

With early voting for the November presidential election set to begin in late September in some states, there are signs across the country that groups are trying to affect the outcome by using deceptive means -- and in most cases in ways that would benefit Republican Donald Trump. Their aim is to to whittle away President Joe Biden's standing with the Democratic Party's base by offering left-leaning, third-party alternatives who could siphon off a few thousand protest votes in close swing state contests.

Spoiler candidates are as old as representative democracy. But in a polarized country in which many Americans have voiced disapproval for both Biden and Trump, the zeal with which Trump's supporters and allies have lent assistance to third-party candidacies adds a new dimension that's deeply troubling to Democrats.

Since his 2016 campaign, Trump has railed against the specter of voter fraud and falsely accused Democrats of "rigging" elections, which he blames for his 2020 loss, a claim rejected in more than 60 court cases and by his own attorney general. Now, it's his allies who are pushing questionable ways to tilt the vote in his favour.

"We've known for years that Donald Trump can't get 50% of the vote. His people know that. And they know they need to find ways to win. One way to do that is propping up third-party candidates," said Josh Schwerin, a spokesman for Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, which many Democrats believe she lost because the Green Party played spoiler.

West's campaign did not respond to an email seeking comment. The Trump and Kennedy campaigns also did not respond to inquiries.

Democrats have focused closely this year on the threat of third-party candidates, intent on avoiding Clinton's fate. Indicators of Republican involvement were quick to surface.

In April, The Washington Post reported pro-Trump activist Scott Presler was gathering signatures for West outside a Trump rally in North Carolina. In a video posted online, Presler described West, an academic, as a "far-left Marxist" who "if we get him on the ballot he could take a percentage point away" from Biden.

But Republican involvement in getting West and his Justice For All party on the state ballot runs far deeper.

At the beginning of June, West had been largely absent from the campaign trail and his political operation was US$30,000 in debt, disclosures show. He had spent just US$2,400 this year to gather the signatures needed to qualify for the ballot in states across the U.S.

But then, Justice For All submitted well over the roughly 13,800 signatures needed. State government emails obtained by The Associated Press show current and former employees of Blitz Canvassing, a Republican firm that earned millions of dollars doing work for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, helped West pull off the feat. The emails, previously reported by NBC News, show the employees affiliated with Blitz Canvassing were the designated representatives to pick up and drop off petitions for West's campaign.

It's unclear who paid the firm, which isn't listed as a paid vendor in West's campaign finance reports. Representatives for Blitz Canvassing didn't respond to requests for comment.

The GOP-linked signature collection effort on West's behalf isn't limited to North Carolina.

Signature gatherers in suburban Washington were witnessed asking people in a Target parking lot to sign a petition to "get Donald Trump off the ballot," NBC4 reported. The signatures were actually being collected to help get West on the Virginia ballot, and one of the workers said they would be handed off to the state GOP, the TV station reported.

Last month, more than 80 paid out-of-state signature gatherers descended on the pivotal battleground of Arizona to collect signatures for West, state records show. Many of the workers listed Wells Marketing, a mysterious Missouri limited liability company, as their employer.

The company, which didn't respond to a request for comment, is closely affiliated with Mark Jacoby, a signature gathering operative from California with a longstanding reputation for using deceptive tactics and who was convicted in 2009 of voter registration fraud, court records show.

In 2020, Jacoby worked to gather signatures to place the rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, on the ballot. Ye's quixotic presidential campaign was widely viewed by Democrats as an effort to dilute Biden's popularity with Black voters.

Jacoby's firm, Let the Voters Decide, was investigated for using dubious signature gathering tactics during a 2020 petition drive in Michigan that sought to roll back some of Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's emergency powers during the coronavirus pandemic. No charges came of the investigation, though, in a report, state Attorney General Dana Nessel said investigators "found evidence of sleazy practices and shady activity."

For Jacoby, it was nothing new.

He was accused in 2008 of tricking voters into registering with the California Republican Party by telling them they were signing an initiative to strengthen penalties for child molesters, the Los Angeles Times reported.

In 2006, signature gatherers told Massachusetts lawmakers that Jacoby instructed them to use deceptive tactics, like asking people to sign a petition to allow for the sale of wine in grocery stores. They were actually gathering signatures to roll back the state's historic gay marriage court ruling, the workers testified during a hearing.

Jacoby did not respond to a request for comment.

Legal experts say West's reliance on an army of paid signature gatherers financed by an outside party could cause him legal trouble because it could be viewed as an in-kind contribution to his campaign.

"The short answer is, yes, there is a potential issue," said Adav Noti, a former Federal Election Commission attorney who's now executive director of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center in Washington. Noti added, however, that it's "complicated" and the success of any campaign finance complaint would heavily depend on specifics because "the law on this issue is really messy."

West is hardly Democrats' only concern.

Kennedy, a scion of one of America's most storied political families, may have entered the race as a Democrat challenging Biden. But even before his break with the party deeply intertwined with his family name, he drew an inordinate amount of attention from Republicans.

Republican megadonor Timothy Mellon, himself the heir to a storied Gilded Age fortune, donated US$25 million to a super political action committee supporting Kennedy, records show. Other major pro-Trump donors have followed suit, including Leila Centner, who donated US$1 million to the Kennedy super PAC, as well as arch conservative donor Elizabeth Uihlein, who gave US$3,300 to his campaign.

Kennedy, an avowed environmentalist, has long been a champion of liberal causes. But he also has been a leading proponent of vaccine conspiracy theories, which helped him rise to greater prominence during the pandemic and earned him admiration from conservatives like former Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson.

Democrats are worried Kennedy still has enough left-wing star appeal that he could peel off voters from Biden. And that appears to have been part of the calculus when Colorado's Libertarian Party reached an agreement to let him use its ballot line.

Hannah Goodman, the chairwoman for the Colorado Libertarians, did not respond to a request for comment. But in interviews posted to YouTube, Goodman, who has said she intends to vote for Trump, expressed disdain for Democrats and said she would like to give them a "taste of that medicine."

"The idea is we could essentially leverage this to make a swing state situation and become real viable players," Goodman said in an interview with the website Free State Colorado. "I am tired of living under a Democratic monopoly."

Legal experts say elections will continue to be susceptible to dirty tricks and chicanery unless the more states adopt different methods of casting a ballot, like ranked choice voting, which allows voters to weight their candidate preferences.

"Unfortunately, we obviously cannot put in place a better electoral system for this year's election, and thus have to hope that no third-party or independent candidate acts as a spoiler," said Edward Foley, a law professor at the Ohio State University who specializes in elections.