Members of the North Carolina Board of Elections are sworn into office on May 7, 2025. (Photo: Lynn Bonner/NC Newsline)
The state Board of Elections voted 3-2 along party lines to once again recognize the Green Party after a discussion over whether it qualified.
Republicans supported recognition, while Democrats were opposed.
The official status means that voters can continue to register with the party.
There are three ways to qualify for party recognition, by submitting petition signatures; having a candidate for president or governor receive at least 2% of the vote in the previous general election or having a presidential candidate on the ballot in at least 35 states.
The North Carolina Green Party was seeking renewed recognition under the third option.
Jill Stein, the party’s presidential candidate, appeared on ballots around the country. The question at the Board of Elections meeting was whether she was on enough state ballots as the Green Party candidate.
State law says that the voters seeking political party recognition needed to have a candidate on 35 state ballots who was “nominated by that group” in the last general election.
Stein was on ballots in at least 35 states, but ran as an independent or as the candidate of a different party in some of them.
Democrats at the Thursday Board meeting said Stein fell short of hitting the 35-state requirement because she was not identified as the Green Party candidate on all of those states’ ballots.
Siobhan Millen, a Democrat, said allowing the Green Party recognition would open the door to other small parties seeking access by claiming they supported candidates on different state ballots even when those candidates were not their parties’ nominees.
However, Stacy “Four’ Eggers IV, a Republican, said the board should “err on the side of party access,” noting the “board’s track record in opposing third-party access to the ballot recently is quite poor.”
The state board has been sued over the last few years by third parties seeking ballot access.
The Green Party sued the board in 2022 after it initially denied the party’s petition for recognition over questionable signatures. The board reversed its decision about a month later.
Last year, a federal judge ordered the board to certify the Justice for All Party, which allowed presidential candidate Cornel West on the ballot.
The Justice for All Party, along with the Constitution Party, the We the People party, and No Labels all lost their party recognition after the November election.
Voters registered with those parties, about 34,000 people, will have their status changed to “unaffiliated” in the state’s voter registration database, the state Board said in a news release.
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