Reading Time: 5 minutesJust days before Wisconsin clerks are supposed to begin sending voters absentee ballots, two court cases involving Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s bid to get off the November presidential ballot may require election officials to make new ballots from scratch — and delay sending them out.A lawsuit in Dane County circuit court and a pending appeal in a conservative court based in Waukesha County have yet to be resolved. An oral ruling in the Dane County case is scheduled for Sept. 16, three days before clerks are required under state law to send out their first batch of absentee ballots. But the appeals court may take it up before then.Similar cases have played out in other swing states, where Kennedy has tried to get off the ballot after endorsing former President Donald Trump.The North Carolina Supreme Court ruled in favor of Kennedy, ordering election officials to take him off the ballot after counties had already printed nearly 3 million ballots with Kennedy’s name listed. The Michigan Supreme Court ruled to keep Kennedy on the ballot, but he has since filed a federal lawsuit to get off it. Regardless of how the courts rule, the issue could fuel a legislative debate over whether to change a state law that appears to make it virtually impossible for candidates to get off the ballot once they file nomination papers and qualify to appear on it.Waukesha County Clerk Meg Wartman, a Republican, said on Friday that she has already ordered the printing of ballots and is proceeding as normal at this point, expecting to get ballots to municipal clerks by Wednesday’s deadline. But if a court orders new ballots without Kennedy’s name, she said, it would take her a couple of weeks to program, test and check the new ballots before sending them to municipal clerks. That would go far beyond the current Sept. 19 deadline.Then, Wartman said, municipal clerks would have to send voters the new ballots. If the ruling comes after local clerks send out a first batch of ballots on Thursday, municipal clerks may have to send those voters new, corrected ballots later on.“That adds to voter confusion, time, energy — just things we have to work with at the polling place,” she said. “For us that work in elections, we’re able to adjust and work as needed, but to send the voters two ballots is difficult.” Some county clerks have already delivered ballots to their municipal clerks, Wartman said. She said she’s waiting until the Wednesday deadline just in case.New ballots wouldn’t just amount to more time but also more money, Wartman said. Redoing the process could cost up to $50,000, Wartman said, and more for municipalities to send out each ballot.“We’ve learned that in elections, everything’s doable. It’s just how expensive it is, the stress that it causes and, again, confusion for the voters,” she said.Clerks typically finalize ballots well before they go out to voters. A Dane County election official said the lawsuit was filed after the county already sent finalized ballots to the printer. La Crosse County Clerk Ginny Dankmeyer, a Democrat, said on Sept. 4 that many other clerks around the state had finalized their ballots as well, “and printers are already printing.”Dankmeyer said she waited a few days after the election commission finalized presidential candidates before she finalized ballots and sent them to be printed, just in case a lawsuit came up.“I actually waited until Friday to send my ballots out, just because I figured that would be the three days if someone would file a lawsuit, that they would do it right away,” she said. “And then someone waited until … a week later to file a lawsuit.”If the lawsuit is successful, Dankmeyer said, “there’s a lot involved. There’s a cost involved. There’s time involved. There’s confusion. If these ballots get back and get mailed out before a decision is made, then a new ballot has to be mailed.”Legislative change may follow ballot access debateKennedy said on Aug. 23 that he was dropping out of the race and endorsing Trump. He filed to withdraw his candidacy ahead of an election meeting on Aug. 27 to give ballot access to presidential candidates. Five of the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission’s six commissioners — three Democrats and two Republicans — approved putting him on the ballot despite his request to withdraw from it. One commissioner, Republican Bob Spindell, voted to remove him from the ballot.The commissioners voting to keep Kennedy on the ballot cited a law stating that candidates who file nomination papers and qualify to be listed on the ballot can’t decline nomination and must appear on the ballot unless they die.The law troubled some of the commissioners, like Republican Don Millis, who said it would make sense to allow candidates to withdraw from the ballot up to the point that the commission sets the ballot. Still, Millis voted to keep Kennedy on the ballot. Rep. Scott Krug, a Republican who chairs the Assembly Elections Committee, said he objects to the law that the Wisconsin Elections Commission cited in keeping Kennedy on the ballot. He’s considering a proposal to change that law next legislative session.“I have a hard time seeing why we want to force somebody to be on the ballot, even if they are seen by one side as trying to play shenanigans or whatever some have said that he’s trying to do,” Krug said. “It’s still somebody’s freedom to associate however they want to. And I just don’t see it being a good choice for good policy and long-term good governance saying, ‘Hey, you’ve got to do it. We know you don’t want to but you have to.’”Krug’s proposal, which he has yet to solidify and circulate, would allow independent candidates to withdraw from the ballot anytime before the governing board overseeing ballot access finalizes its list of candidates.“If you’re in the process of being approved for ballot access as an individual candidate who went through nomination papers, why not let you off? What are we hurting by letting you go?” Krug said.The criticism against such a law, Krug said, is that it would incentivize coalition-building — allowing independent candidates to drop off the ballot at the last minute, in exchange for something, to give other candidates a boost.But Krug said European politics have long operated through coalition-building. It’s unclear how much support the proposal could receive in the Legislature. Lawmakers are expecting Republicans’ near-supermajority to shrink substantially after the November election, with some Democratic legislative leaders even predicting they’ll flip the Assembly to a Democratic majority.Candidates who no longer wanted to appear on the ballot used to have an easier off-ramp. A state law on the books until the late 1970s allowed a candidate to “decline the nomination by delivering to his filing official a written, signed and acknowledged declination,” according to the Legislative Reference Bureau.The drafting file for the legislation that repealed that law didn’t offer insight into why lawmakers wanted to change it, the bureau stated.Kennedy says rights are violated by keeping him on ballotKennedy’s lawsuit alleges that as an independent, he is being treated differently from major party candidates in a way that violates the First Amendment and a constitutional clause guaranteeing equal protection.The complaint points to a state law allowing major party candidates to submit their presidential and vice presidential candidates up until the first Tuesday of September, while independent candidates have to file nomination papers by the first Tuesday in August.Those different standards give major parties more time to vet candidates and decide their best course of action, Kennedy’s lawyers state. The lawsuit further alleges that candidates don’t qualify to appear on the ballot until the Wisconsin Elections Commission approves them. Until that date, the lawsuit states, the commission should have allowed him to withdraw from the ballot.“In First Amendment parlance: it has compelled him to not just speak, but to associate with a cause he doesn’t want to be part of,” the lawsuit states.This coverage is made possible through Votebeat, a nonpartisan news organization covering local election administration and voting access. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.Should candidates be allowed to just drop out? RFK Jr. lawsuit spurs debate about changing state law is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.