Michigan‘s Supreme Court, which has a majority of Democrat-nominated justices, ruled on Monday that Robert Kennedy Jr. must appear on the battleground state’s ballot despite his efforts to get removed after ending his presidential campaign.
Kennedy, who endorsed former President Donald Trump after dropping out of the 2024 race last month, “has not shown an entitlement to this extraordinary relief, and we reverse” an appeals-level decision from last week, a majority order said.
The reversal could have significant consequences in a state where Trump won against Hillary Clinton by roughly 10,000 votes in the 2016 election and President Joe Biden prevailed against Trump by about 150,000 votes in the 2020 contest.
“This plainly has nothing to do with ballot or election integrity,” said Kennedy’s attorney Aaron Siri, according to the AP. “The aim is precisely the opposite — to have unwitting Michigan voters throw away their votes on a withdrawn candidate.”
Michigan’s secretary of state, a Democrat named Jocelyn Benson, refused to take Kennedy off the ballot, prompting a lawsuit. The Natural Law Party had nominated Kennedy and Benson’s office insisted minor party candidates “cannot withdraw.”
In a statement hailing the Michigan Supreme Court’s decision, a spokesperson for Benson declared, “Clerks can now move forward with the ballot printing process to ensure absentee ballots will be delivered to voters by the federal deadlines.”
The order to keep Kennedy on the Michigan ballot earned a stern rebuke from two Republican-nominated justices on the high court, David Viviano and Brian Zahra, who warned the ruling “will do nothing to rebuild” the public’s trust in elections.
“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 pair wrote in their dissenting opinion.
Kennedy, who labored to get on the ballot in all 50 states as an independent candidate, is now trying to undo his success in various places that could prove to be pivotal in Trump’s election face-off against Vice President Kamala Harris.
The AP reported North Carolina’s high court, which has a majority of justices who are registered as Republicans, gave Kennedy a victory on Monday by ruling ballots for the presidential election must be reprinted without his name on them.
