The Democratic Party has filed dozens of lawsuits in states across the country to try and keep third-party candidates, particularly from the leftist Green Party, off the ballot because of partisan concerns that those candidates will draw votes away from Democrats and help Republicans win elections.

The Democrats just lost one of those legal fights when the Montana Supreme Court ruled that a Green Party Senate candidate can appear on the state's ballot in November's general election, according to The Hill.

That ruling will likely make it even more difficult for the already vulnerable Democratic incumbent Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) to win re-election against his Republican challenger, Tim Sheehy, who is leading by comfortable margins in all of the recent polls.

Montana high court rules in favor of Green Party Senate candidate

During Montana's primary elections in June, Green Party voters in the state elected Michael Downey to be their nominee to take on Sen. Tester, but Downey later dropped out of the race before the deadline to do so in August, and party officials quickly replaced him as the nominee with the runner-up in the race, Robert Barb.

The Montana Democratic Party swiftly filed suit to block Barb from appearing on the ballot and argued primarily that the Green Party had violated state law and party bylaws with the appointment of the replacement candidate. They also asserted that Barb was secretly a Republican plant and that his inclusion in the race would force Democrats to expend unnecessary resources and time to defend against his efforts to siphon votes away from Tester's left flank.

A lower court judge initially granted a request for a temporary restraining order to prevent certification of state ballots bearing Barb's name as the Green Party candidate, but that ruling was tossed out after another lower court judge determined that the ballots had already been certified before the order was handed down.

That resulted in an emergency appeal to the Montana Supreme Court for a "writ of supervisory control" to effectively overturn and reverse the decision, but it upheld the second lower court's conclusion -- though it differed on how it was reached -- in a 13-page opinion released on Tuesday.

"MDP has not convinced us that the District Court erred in its rulings in its September 3, 2024 Order, although we reach the same result as that court under a different analysis," the state's highest court ruled. "Since we have not concluded that the District Court is proceeding under a mistake of law, this matter is not susceptible to writ of supervisory control."

Dems accuse Greens of being nothing more than "spoilers"

The lost legal fight in Montana is just one of several litigious battles Democrats have launched in multiple states against the Green Party, which they denigrate as being little more than a "spoiler" in close elections who benefit Republicans by drawing votes away from Democrats, according to The Guardian.

Emblematic of the Democrats' low opinion of the Greens is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez's (D-NY) recent online feud with Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein, who the progressive congresswoman accused of being "not serious" and only "showing up once every four years" in a "predatory" fashion to take advantage of left-leaning voters who are "justifiably pissed off" by the current political status quo.

For what it is worth, The Guardian observed that while Green Party factions in Europe and other foreign nations have gained political footholds in their respective nations and even been part of prior ruling coalitions, the Green Party in the U.S. has not found similar success as it perpetually polls at around just 1% and its candidates have only won less than 150 seats total out of more than 500,000 elected offices nationwide, nearly all of which are at the local level.

The leftist environmentalist party exudes optimism for the future, though, and a spokesperson told the outlet of the New York congresswoman, "When Greens get elected to Congress some day, they’ll work with progressives like AOC and others on shared legislative agenda," and added, "The Green party didn’t pick an election-year fight with AOC, the reverse is what happened."

Dems accuse GOP of boosting Green candidates for partisan purposes

Meanwhile, in an expansion of the arguments heard in the Montana lawsuit, CBS News reported that Democrats are accusing Republicans of trying to manipulate elections by boosting Green Party candidates and aiding them in the legal fights to secure ballot access through the use of GOP-aligned attorneys.

Yet, others counter that that is simply shrewd and strategic politics, which Democrats themselves have employed to boost right-leaning Libertarian Party candidates to siphon votes away from Republicans, and the Greens insist that while they understand the Republicans may have their own partisan interests in mind, they are nonetheless willing to accept legal help in the ballot access fights from wherever they can find it.