An employee of the DNC has filed a complaint with the state Elections Commission seeking to bar the Green Party from placing a presidential candidate on the Wisconsin ballot.
The complaint alleged the Greens don’t have anyone eligible under state law to nominate a slate of 10 presidential electors. Without any electors, the complaint argues, the party is ineligible to place someone on the presidential ballot.
“We take the nomination process for President and Vice President very seriously and believe every candidate should follow the rules,” said Adrienne Watson, a senior adviser to the DNC. “Because the Wisconsin Green Party hasn’t fielded candidates for legislative or statewide office and doesn’t have any current incumbent legislative or statewide office holders, it cannot nominate candidates and should not be on the ballot in November.”
A co-chair of the Wisconsin Green Party didn’t immediately respond to a message late yesterday seeking comment.
The complaint is one of several moves the Democratic National Committee has made seeking to block third-party candidates from the ballot in battleground states. The party last week filed a challenge to the nomination papers of Cornel West as he seeks to qualify for the Wisconsin ballot.
The Green Party begins meeting today to formally nominate a presidential candidate, which is expected to be Jill Stein. She received 31,072 votes when she was on the Wisconsin ballot in 2016, more than Donald Trump’s 22,748-vote winning margin over Hillary Clinton.
Greens qualified for a line on the presidential ballot after they had a statewide candidate in 2022 eclipse 1% of the vote. As part of the process, party representatives must meet on the first Tuesday in October to nominate a slate of 10 presidential electors.
The party members who are eligible to be part of that meeting must be: candidates for the Assembly and Senate nominated at the primary, state office holders and holdover state senators.
The Greens don’t occupy any state Senate seats or statewide offices. The complaint argues that only leaves candidates for the Assembly and Senate as options for the required meeting. But no Green candidates filed by the June 2 deadline to run for the Legislature this fall, and the party failed to support write-in candidates on Tuesday’s primary ballot.
David Strange, the DNC’s deputy operations director for Wisconsin and a Milwaukee resident, filed the challenge. He also filed the challenge seeking to deny West a post on the ballot, arguing the activist and his running mate, Melinda Abdullah, failed to get their declarations of candidacy properly notarized.
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