Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will appear on Maryland ballots this fall despite suspending his independent presidential campaign last week and endorsing former Republican President Donald Trump.

Maryland election officials on Tuesday notified both Kennedy’s campaign and the Green Party — whose presidential candidate, Jill Stein, was also seeking to gain ballot access in Maryland — that each met the 10,000-signature requirement this month.Both Kennedy and Stein are now set to join Trump, Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and Libertarian Chase Oliver as presidential nominees on the Maryland ballot.

Election officials must certify and publicize the ballot by Sept. 3 in order to print, audit and begin sending out mail-in ballots later in September.

Kennedy had been seeking ballot access in every state in an attempt to become the first successful independent presidential candidate in modern history. Public polls, however, indicated his chances were slim and he ultimately dropped out Friday. He said he would remain on the ballot in most states but seek to remove himself from key battlegrounds, where his presence could determine the winner between Trump and Harris, though public polls also did not provide a clear indication he would have a significant impact for either.

Still, Kennedy encouraged voters in solidly red or blue states to vote for him anyway. That includes Maryland, which is widely expected to back Harris after supporting Democratic President Joe Biden over Trump by a more than 2-1 margin in 2020.

“I think you’re going to see a lot of people vote for Mr. Kennedy. I’m going to put it in the thousands,” said Josh Mazer, an Annapolis resident who served as Kennedy’s Maryland state director.

Kennedy, the nephew of President John F. Kennedy and son of U.S. Sen. and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, has deep family ties to Maryland. His sister Kathleen Kennedy Townsend served as lieutenant governor and was the Democratic gubernatorial nominee in 2002.

His campaign had been active in Maryland — including launching his nationwide ballot access campaign with a rally outside Annapolis last year.

Earlier this month, his team turned in just over 27,000 signatures from registered Maryland voters. Though the campaign vowed all of its signatures were valid, election officials verified 15,268 and rejected 11,767 as invalid, according to a State Board of Elections letter sent to the campaign Tuesday morning.

Mazer said more than 200 volunteers gathered the signatures and that there would be a “pure volunteer effort moving forward” with “some very dedicated people” who don’t want to vote for Trump or Harris.

“People out there are very discontent,” Mazer said, adding that he wouldn’t support Trump while echoing Kennedy’s statements about what he sees as the Democratic Party’s “censorship” of alternative viewpoints along with its policies around COVID-19 and foreign wars.

The Green Party, which has regularly appeared on Maryland presidential ballots but needed to regain recognition as an official party, turned in about 17,800 signatures earlier this month. Of those, 10,134 were accepted — just above the requirement, according to a separate letter from the elections board to the party.

“This is an expression of the intense desire for candidates and elected officials who will stand for our values — peace, social and environmental justice, and democracy,” Maryland Green Party Chair Brian Bittner said in a statement

As the Green Party nominee in 2012 and 2016, Stein won 0.6% and 1.3% of the vote, respectively, in Maryland. The party’s nominee in 2020 won 0.5% of the vote.

In addition to nominating Stein again this year, the party also has nominees in the 8th Congressional District, a seat now held by Democratic U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin since 2017; the 14th District for Baltimore City Council, now held by Democratic Councilwoman Odette Ramos; and an Anne Arundel County-based Circuit Court judicial race, according to the party.

Kennedy’s turn toward Trump comes less than a year after he originally ran for president as a Democrat, in the primary race then dominated by Biden.

Townsend had been among several members of the Kennedy family who opposed his campaign and his message, such as his longtime opposition to vaccines.

She joined four other family members in a statement calling his endorsement of Trump “a betrayal of the values that our father and our family hold most dear. It is a sad ending to a sad story.”