Supreme Court leaves Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein off the ballot in Nevada

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has rejected an emergency appeal from Nevada’s Green Party seeking to include presidential candidate Jill Stein on the ballot in the battleground state.

The court’s order Friday, without any noted dissents, allows ballot preparation and printing to proceed in Nevada without Stein and other Green Party candidates included.

The outcome is a victory for Democrats who had challenged the Greens’ inclusion on the ballot in a state with a history of extremely close statewide races. In 2020, President Joe Biden outpaced former President Donald Trump by fewer than 35,000 votes in the state.

The state’s Democratic party had sued to kick Stein off the ballot after the Green party submitted enough signatures to include her. A lower state court ruled in her favor, but the state Supreme Court decided the petition forms were faulty.

The Green party was represented at the Supreme Court by Jay Sekulow, a Trump ally who was part of the president’s legal team during his first impeachment trial.

Across the country, a network of Republican political operatives, lawyers and their allies is trying to shape November’s election in ways that favor Trump. Their goal is to prop up third-party candidates, including Stein and Cornel West who offer liberal voters an alternative that could siphon away support from Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.