Green Party candidate Jill Stein is suing the state of Ohio because state election officials said they won't count her votes on Election Day because her party apparently named her running mate after the deadline.
Stein, running mate Butch Ware and three Ohio voters filed the suit on Wednesday, claiming that the decision "infringes on their constitutional rights to free speech, association, and equal protection and the voting rights of the Ohio-based plaintiffs," according to the Washington Examiner.
Stein filed as an independent candidate in Ohio because the Green Party lost its state recognition in Ohio several years ago.
She named party nominee for Ohio governor Anita Rios as a placeholder for her running mate until Ware was nominated in August to fill the position.
Ohio election officials said Stein's name would still be on the state ballots, which were already shipped to overseas military voters, but votes for her and Rios/Ware would not be counted.
The request to remove Rios was granted, but the request to add Ware was received after the deadline, the officials said.
The lawsuit contends that the request by Rios to withdraw her candidacy was submitted by a local party official without Rios's knowledge.
The lawsuit plaintiffs want a temporary injunction and restraining order to force officials to count votes for Stein.
In 2020, Stein got 46,271 votes in Ohio, less than 1% of the votes in the state.
Her vote total was only about 10% of the more than 450,000 votes that separated former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden in Ohio, which had 18 electoral votes.
Trump handily won the state despite having only a narrow advantage in polling close to Election Day.
In 2024, Ohio looks like a solid win for Trump again, and its position is only made stronger by the fact that it is the home state of Sen. J.D. Vance (R).
Stein is one of the last third party candidates left standing after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. withdrew from the race and endorsed Trump in August.
While the counting of her votes might not make much of a difference in Ohio, there are swing states that had smaller vote margins in 2020, and if just 45,000 votes more votes in Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin had gone to Trump, it could have been an entirely different result.
