RFK Jr., Cornel West Stay on Michigan Ballot
It’s not all bad for Republicans since West is on the ballot, who can take voters from Kamala.
The Michigan Supreme Court ruled that Cornel West and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. must stay on the state’s November ballot.
RFK Jr. wanted his name removed after he suspended his campaign and endorsed Donald Trump.
The state said no. Michigan Court of Claims Judge Christopher P. Yates agreed with the state.
RFK Jr. appealed. The Michigan Court of Appeals reversed Yates’s decision.
Well, the state took RFK Jr. to the state supreme court.
The Michigan Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals and ruled that RFK Jr. didn’t show “an entitlement to this extraordinary relief” to remove himself from the ballot:
To obtain the extraordinary remedy of a writ of mandamus, the plaintiff bears the burden of showing that: “(1) the plaintiff has a clear, legal right to performance of the specific duty sought, (2) the defendant has a clear legal duty to perform, (3) the act is ministerial, and (4) no other adequate legal or equitable remedy exists that might achieve the same result.” Taxpayers for Mich Constitutional Gov’t v Michigan, 508 Mich 48, 82 (2021), quoting Rental Props Owners Ass’n of Kent Co v Kent Co Treasurer, 308 Mich App 498, 518 (2014). “ ‘A ministerial act is one in which the law prescribes and defines the duty to be performed with such precision and certainty as to leave nothing to the exercise of discretion or judgment.’”
The court added: Assuming, without deciding, that the Court of Appeals was correct in its interpretation of MCL 168.686a(4), plaintiff has neither pointed to any source of law that prescribes and defines a duty to withdraw a candidate’s name from the ballot nor demonstrated his clear legal right to performance of this specific duty, let alone identified a source of law written with “ ‘such precision and certainty as to leave nothing to the exercise of discretion or judgment.’”
The order did not say how the justices voted. However, the court Democrat-nominated justices have a 4-3 majority.
Two Republican-nominated justices wrote a dissenting opinion:
The Secretary’s duty to maintain the integrity of Michigan elections includes an obligation to present actual candidates and associate them with the offices that they are seeking. By requiring Kennedy’s name to appear on the general election ballot, the Secretary of State is improperly and needlessly denying the electorate a choice between persons who are actual candidates willing to serve if elected. We can only hope that the Secretary’s misguided action—now sanctioned with the imprimatur of this Court—will not have national implications.
Before Republicans get mad, the same court refused to listen to an appeal to remove Cornel West from the ballot.
The Democrats tried to remove West, but Michigan Court of Claims Judge James Robert Redford ruled that Cornel West and his running mate Melina Abdullah can appear on Michigan’s presidential ballot in November.
Attorney Mark Brewer, who used to chair the state’s party, filed an appeal with the Michigan Court of Appeals. He “represents Rosa Holliday, a Michigan voter, in the ballot eligibility dispute.”
The Michigan Court of Appeals agreed with Redford.
Brewer went to the Michigan State Court, which refused to pick up the appeal, which leaves the lower court’s ruling in place.
Green party candidate Jill Stein is also on the Michigan ballot.
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Comments
10,000 votes here, another 15,000 there
What’s to worry about
Pretty sure we will be hearing from Milhouse in here.
Gotta love it when a troll single-handedly makes a comment section unreadable for years.
What about North Carolina?
He’s off there. The Supreme Court just ruled,
It doesn’t really matter because they don’t actually count votes anyway. It’s a matter of how many votes the dems need how many turn up in midnight deliveries. The system is designed for cheating and will be maintained that way.
As I said, there is no real law, there is only the will of the Judge. Keep shopping til ya get one that’ll back your play.
Wrong. There is a law, as the supreme court majority pointed out. And if that law doesn’t impose a duty on the SoS then she has no such duty. It was the appeals court panel that was making up a legal duty that can’t be found in the law.
There is a law, but democrat judges ignore it whenever they please, it would seem.
Read the soundly reasoned dissent, and contrast and compare to the naked expression of will by the democrat majority, that barely bothers to give a spurious reason for its decision.
Or it’s Republican judges who are ignoring it. I have not yet read the decision, just the excerpts cited here and in other news articles, but based on those the majority decision seems like the obviously correct one. Either the law imposes a duty on the secretary or it does not, and apparently there is nothing in the statute that says it does.
Actually, her press sec stated that minor party candidates CANNOT withdraw….not that she had jurisdiction to decide whether or not to remove them.
https://www.axios.com/2024/08/27/michigan-rfk-jr-ballot-2024-trump
Please read the dissent, it explains it well.
The Court should have dismissed the Secretary’s motions as moot because the deadline for the Secretary to deliver the names of the candidates was 9/6 it is not 9/9.
From the dissent:
“Kennedy filed an action in the Court of Claims to compel the Secretary to remove his name from the ballot. The Court of Claims denied relief. On appeal, a unanimous panel of the Court of Appeals reversed the Court of Claims and ordered Kennedy’s name to be removed from the ballot. The Secretary filed an appeal in this Court on September 6, 2024, at 6:05 p.m., and noted in its motion for immediate consideration that earlier that day, “at 3:42 p.m., . . . the Secretary sent the call of the election and certification of candidates to the 83 county clerks without Kennedy’s name listed as the Natural Law Party’s candidate for President.” Under MCL 168.648, September 6 is the deadline for the Secretary to deliver the list of candidates and ballot questions that will appear on the ballot for the upcoming general election on November 5, 2024.
As matters currently stand, with Kennedy absent from the ballot, there has not been any violation of Michigan election law. The Secretary of State plainly had the power to remove Kennedy’s name from the ballot, and the majority order does not question that power to remove Kennedy’s name from the ballot. Further, the Secretary’s claim that Kennedy is barred from withdrawing his name from the ballot under MCL 168.686a is meritless.1
(Footnote 1) Moreover, Kennedy’s answer, filed this morning with this Court, provides the following astute observation:
In fact, [the Secretary of State] until this appeal screamed at every turn that there would be harm to the public interest if the identity of what candidates to print on the ballots were not finalized and certified this past Friday. That occurred. She now seeks to cause the very harm to the public interest she said must be avoided at all costs—potentially, if she obtains a stay, upend the certainty as to the candidates she certified to all 83 candidates to print on the ballots and which they were to begin printing forthwith.”
In other words, the Democrat majority in September 9 should have dismissed the motion as moot, because the Secretary cannot any longer change the list of candidates as the deadline to do so has passed over 48 hours. If the Secretary does transmit a new list with Kennedy on it Secretary is in violation of the law because she no longer may transmit a list.
The Court just reversed the order it did not exempt the Secretary from the lawful deadline.
Makes you wonder why that partisan asshat Sec of State is fighting so hard to keep him on, doesn’t it
It’s no wonder why she fought to keep him on. That’s in her party’s interest, and as an elected official she’s obviously going to try to give her party the maximum advantage that the law allows. In this case, as the lower court and then the supreme court agreed, the law was on her side, so of course she wasn’t going to give up without a fight. Do you think Republican secretaries of state behave differently?
The question is what would she do if it were in her interest to remove him. but she honestly believed the law required him to remain. (Not just, as the lower and supreme courts ruled, that she’s not required to remove him, but that she’s not allowed to.) Would she still fight to remove him and make the Republicans litigate to keep him on? Or would she do what she believed the law required?
This is a load of shit. She fought to keep RFK on while at the same time fighting to remove West.
One can’t be wanking I’m about the law in one case while fighting tooth and nail to remove another candidate at the same time!
The fact you support this kind of carry on tells us just how lonely that peanut you call a brain really is Justice Millhouse 😂😂😂
That is how law works. She is entitled to argue for positions that are good for her party. The fact that she won one of these cases and lost the other proves that the court was not in the tank, and ruled honestly on its view of the law.
The fact she HAS the ability to chose whether to remove or leave someone tells us that she SHOULD have removed RFK when he asked while she SHOULD have left West on the ballot as he wanted.
Any sane adult, which apparently excludes you and pretty much every Democrat, understands the approach that should be taken here. Removing RFK as that is his request while leaving West on…as that is his desire.
By demanding to leave one on while attempting to remove the other does not mean voters are being given a meaningful ballot as there is quite clearly someone on the ballot who is not running for President…while removing another who has EVERY intention of running for president.
There’s no “should” about it. The law doesn’t deal in “should”. Courts can’t even say what she “ought” to do, let alone make her do it.
Kennedy is demanding that she do him a favor. She’s entitled to decide whether she feels like doing it, based on what’s in her party’s interest. We would expect a Republican in the same position to do likewise.
You know what you remind me of? It just hit me. You sound like the Democrats who get all upset because McConnell “should” have brought Garland up for a senate vote in 2016. Of course he could have done so, but there’s no reason he should have. As he said at the time, there’s no history of previous senate majorities doing favors like that for an outgoing president from the opposite party, so there was no reason for the 2016 majority to start such a custom.
And the same Democrats who complain that he did bring up Barrett in 2020 completely miss the point. He never claimed he couldn’t bring Garland up, he just saw no reason why he should. And he was right. The senate is under no obligation to consider the president’s nominations, but it can if it wants to, and it will naturally make that decision based on the majority’s political interests. That’s just how it works.
The same applies here.
This is pretty stupid even for you Justice Millhouse 🤣
Any sane, rational adult will agree that if a candidate drops out of the Presidential race then they SHOULD be removed from every ballot in the country.
Presenting voters with a ballot with his name on it with the sole intention of syphoning votes away from Trump, WHILE at the same time Democrats FORCING candidates off the ballot who will syphon votes from their preferred candidate should be treated as criminal…because the ballot given to the voters is fraudulent.
The fact you are arguing in favour of this kind of behaviour is laughable 🤣
Will Biden be on any state ballots?
No, of course not. Why would he be? In what state do you think he was nominated?
Something, something, “two-tier”, something.
Subotai Bahadur
There are no two tiers here, as this very article points out.
SCOTUS?
No, it’s got nothing to do with SCOTUS. There’s no issue of federal law here.
As I said, let’s wait till we hear from the state Supreme Court.
The reasoning seems to me to be correct; a court can’t order someone to do something unless there is a law that clearly requires that person to do it. Nobody here could point to any law that requires the secretary of state to remove a name from the ballot. Just because she can do so, and maybe even ought to do so, just because the judge thinks he would have done so had he been in her position, doesn’t give the judge the right to order her if she doesn’t want to. That seems obvious and inarguable. Courts can’t just make up duties for people. Surely everyone agrees with that.
So those who think the court ought to have ordered the secretary of state to remove Kennedy’s name have to point to a law that says so. Nobody seems to have found such a law yet. What we do know is that with regard to congressional candidates the law specifically forbids the secretary from removing their names; its silence about presidential candidates can’t be parlayed into a positive duty to do so.
There is no good reason to remove someone who wants to come off who has absolutely no intention to run for President.
Presenting voters with a ballot with his name on it is fraud. It’s false and in this day and age of misinformation alert would seem to fit right in with that.
If someone wants to come off the ballot then they absolutely should be taken off the ballot. There is no good argument for keeping them on. NONE.
But apparently in this age of planet sized brain thinkers, such as Justice Millhouse, it’s all kosher and above board to keep someone on the ballet even when they are demanding to come off.
It is wrong REGARDLESS of whose party is in charge.
His intentions or wishes are irrelevant. He filed the documents, so he’s on the ballot. Unless the law explicitly gives him the right to remove his name, where could such a right come from?
Remember that the law explicitly forbids removing the names of congressional candidates. And it doesn’t say presidential candidates are different; it merely doesn’t mention them at all. Maybe the legislators simply didn’t think of them, or didn’t notice that they weren’t mentioned. At any rate the fact that congressional candidates are explicitly denied such a right is enough to demolish your argument that they “must” have it, that not removing them is “fraud”. And if it’s not fraud in the case of congressional candidates, how can it be fraud in the case of presidential ones? What’s the difference?
His intention and desire are UTTERLY relevant.
A ballot with his name on it while he has demanded it to be removed is nothing short of fraud as voters are being given a false document containing names of people with no intention of running for President.
The fact you cannot understand this tells us more about you than you realise. You’re a very good example of why intellectual pygmies shouldn’t be allowed anywhere without an escort, and a bicycle helmet when out in public 🤣🤣
No, it is not fraud, as evidenced by the fact that the law requires exactly that in the case of congressional candidates. Would you call complying with that law fraud too?!
The fact that someone’s name appears on a ballot does not give that person any rights, let alone ownership of the ballot. A ballot is not a list of people who “intend” to run, but of people who have filed the papers to run. What they want done now is irrelevant; it’s not up to them and they have no right to demand anything. Again, in the case of congressional candidates the law explicitly says that, so it’s up to you to explain why presidential candidates are so different.
It fits the very definition of fraud, presenting voters with a ballot knowing full well a candidate is not running for office.
Its not my problem you cant work this out but then again, with the intellect of a 5w light bulb why are we not surprised 🤣
I think the issue here is between what we know is fair and what the law says is allowed. Milhouse is arguing what the law allows and mailman is arguing what is fair. Both of you are correct. If we had really fair elections there would be minimum requirements (x number of signatures or whatever) to get on the ballot and there would be an impartial panel to make sure the signatures were legitimate and after that no more challenges. Ballots printed as close to the election as possible and if someone drops out or dies before they are printed they are removed. But that is not what we have and the people running for office use the rules we have to give themselves the best chance of winning.
If the same law expressly forbids an action under a set of circumstances (e.g. candidates for state office may not remove themselves) and does not forbid it under another set of circumstances (e.g. candidates for President are not disallowed from removing themselves) the law obviously does maks a distinction and regulates the issue differently. Because it is a binary yes-no choice that means the action not forbidden is allowed, and it is “expressly” allowed. To say otherwise is nothing but lawlessness and ignoring at least on part of the law.
We are not talking laws made by different legislatures (then the rule mentioned above would not be dispositive as they could have different defaults) but one law made by one legislature under one title.
Consequently, even the majority of the Court admits it does not question the reading of the law by the appellate court but thinks that somehow there is a possibility that the Secretary has some sort of discretion ―although the majority does not point to any language in the law granting Secretary any sort of discretion, nor can they pout to it, because it simply is not there.
Sorry, that “pout” should read “point”.
Couple elections back the left stole the court. Hard left slip and fall lawyer, family is well known, ran and took the seat.
Don’t expect sanity from michigan, the voters are the dumbest in the nation.
That’s true, but in this case the law appears to be with them.
The law is also dumb and you know that. The idea that someone can stay on the ballot against their will is both anti-choice and rife for misuse with strawman candidates.
Republicans should promote West is Michigan. Surreptitiously, of course.
And I’m sure they’re doing so. They’re already documented as helping him get on the ballot in many states.