In a Monday decision, the Michigan Supreme Court overturned a Friday court of appeals determination that ordered his name to be removed. Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson now has the opportunity to keep RFK Jr. on the poll. This comes despite Kennedy’s statement next month that he would withdraw from the race and that he would do so in swing states like Michigan in an effort to assist former president Donald Trump.
” This frankly has nothing to do with ballot or vote integrity”, Kennedy’s lawyer Aaron Siri said Monday to The Federalist’s Senior Legal Correspondent Margot Cleveland. The goal is precisely the opposite: to include unaware Michigan voters cast their ballots for a withdrawn candidate.
The decision allows Democrat Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson to preserve Kennedy’s brand on November’s vote. But the Michigan Court of Appeals ordered Kennedy’s brand off the vote Friday, as the Federalist previously reported.
” The Michigan secretary of state, as directed by the Court of Appeals, had now certified the individuals to all 83 districts in Michigan for poll producing without Mr. Kennedy’s name”, Siri said to Cleveland.  ,
The Federalist inquired from Benson’s company about whether she intended to keep Kennedy’s name on the ballot and whether it was still feasible at this time. However, Director of Communications Angela Benander stated in plain English:” We’re grateful to the Michigan Supreme Court for their prompt reply. The poll printing process can now be continued by officials to make sure absentee ballots are delivered to voters by the national dates.
The Ruling
The position supreme court’s ruling reversed Friday’s court of appeals decision, according to the court order.
The Monday order reads,” Plaintiff has either pointed to any source of law that , prescribes and defines a duty to remove a candidate’s name from the ballot nor , demonstrated his obvious constitutional right to perform this particular duty, allow alone identified , a source of law written with” for precision and certainty as to leave nothing to the exercise of discretion or judgment,”” the order reads.” Hence, the plaintiff has not shown an privilege to this remarkable alleviation, and we change.”
Justices David F. Viviano and Brian K. Zahra dissented, saying the” decision will do nothing to restore the public’s faith in the justice and reliability of our votes.”
” No act prohibits a , political candidate from withdrawing his or her election. There is no real way to reject a plea to retreat before the votes have been printed for the common election,” the opposition reads.
The decision has the potential to affect the referendum’s outcome with a” substantial cost to the integrity of the election, “as” voters may be poorly denied a choice between people who are truly candidates, and who are willing to serve if elected,” Viviano and Zahra argued.
” The ballots printed as a result of the Court’s decision will have the potential to , confuse the voters, distort their choices, and pervert the true popular will and affect the , outcome of the election,” the dissent reads.
Election Engineering
Michigan’s Natural Law Party, whose banner he was running, reached out to the state director of elections when Kennedy’s campaign first requested that his name be removed from the ballot, saying it was opposed because it could find itself” severely prejudiced” if its candidate were removed from the ballot, “according to the state supreme court order.”
Last month, Benson said she would keep Kennedy’s name on the ballot even after he withdrew from the race, with her office reportedly claiming” minor party candidates cannot withdraw,” as previously noted in The Federalist. Apparently, her office claimed that Kennedy had already pushed his political party to elect new members and that he had not been able to resign.  ,
So, according to the order, Kennedy filed a complaint with the court of claims on August 30. The court denied Kennedy’s request, so he brought the case to the court of appeals.
According to its Sept. 6 order, the court of appeals determined that Kennedy had a” clear legal right to have his name removed from the ballot.” It discovered that Michigan law permits party conventions to nominate candidates for state offices, but that they are not permitted to resign. However, it decided that nominations to the president’s office do not.
In the state supreme court ruling, Justice Elizabeth Welch argued in her concurring opinion that, on this point”, statutory ambiguity makes it impossible to conclude that defendant had a , clear , legal duty to remove plaintiff from the ballot.”
Kennedy claimed in the Associated Press that “his internal polls had shown that his presence in the race would hurt Trump and help Democratic nominee Kamala Harris” in the election.
In addition, state Democrats and Benson have been pushing to prevent Cornel West from being endorsed by Michigan, citing “technical issues with his identity notarization” and “alleged fraud,” according to The Detroit News.
A Democrat’s challenge to an earlier court of appeals decision, which stated West must remain on the ballot, was not up for discussion by the state supreme court.  , West’s presence on the ballot could likely hurt Harris ‘ chances, as noted by PBS.  ,
Benson responded to a question from Benson asking why he was working to remove Kennedy from the ballot and Cornel West from the ballot in an interview with The Federalist. Benson stated in the statement that Benson’s office did not seek to overturn the Appellate Court’s decision regarding Cornel West.
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Logan Washburn is a staff writer who writes about election ethics. He graduated from Hillsdale College, served as Christopher Rufo’s editorial assistant, and has bylines in The Wall Street Journal, The Tennessean, and The Daily Caller. Logan was born and raised in Central Oregon, but now resides in rural Michigan.
