The Michigan Supreme Court ruled Monday that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name will be on the state’s presidential ballot.

This appears to settle the legal battle and allows local clerks to start printing absentee ballots to mail to overseas and military voters. Kennedy is the nominee of the Natural Law Party of Michigan. But he tried to remove his name from the ballot after suspending his campaign and endorsing former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee.

The case pitted Kennedy against election officials in the Secretary of State’s office who determined Kennedy flouted Michigan’s deadlines and election standards.

The order in the case was unsigned but in written statements, there was clearly a division between justices nominated by the Democratic and Republican parties.

Justice Elizabeth Welch, who was nominated by Democrats, wrote in a concurring statement that Kennedy had plenty of time to withdraw and his late exit left the Natural Law Party of Michigan without a nominee after Kennedy sought and accepted the convention nomination.

“Plaintiff waited more than four months before asking defendant to remove his name from the ballot. When plaintiff made his request, defendant faced a deadline for ballot printing that was two weeks away,” she wrote. “Additionally, the Natural Law Party, which opposed plaintiff’s efforts to remove himself from the ballot, had no opportunity to field a candidate and faced considerable prejudice.”

In a dissenting opinion, two Republican-nominated justices said the decision will only add to election turmoil.

“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,” said Justices Brian Zahra and David Viviano. “In short, the Court’s ruling will do nothing to rebuild the public’s trust in the fairness and accuracy of our elections.”

There was some urgency to the case since the deadline to finalize ballots was last week so absentee ballots can be sent to military and overseas voters.

A court majority also ruled in a separate, unsigned opinion, that a paperwork error on petitions will not bar academic and activist Cornel West from the Michigan presidential ballot as an independent.

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Independent presidential candidate Cornel West must appear on the ballot in the battleground state of Michigan, a judge ruled about a week after West was disqualified.

Court of Claims Judge James Robert Redford wrote in a decision released Saturday that West’s campaign submitted the proper number of signatures to qualify for the ballot and that presidential candidates are not required to file affidavits of identity. The ruling came after the Michigan Bureau of Elections informed West on Aug. 16 that he would not be certified because the affidavit of identity he submitted was not properly notarized.

Redford also rejected the state’s findings that West’s affidavit was incorrectly notarized.

West, a leftist academic, progressive activist and long-shot presidential candidate, is at the center of multiple legal and political battles as Democrats and Republicans seek to use the impacts of third-party candidates who could take support from their opponents. Republican allies in states such as Arizona have sought to keep West on the ballot amid Democratic fears he could siphon votes from Vice President Kamala Harris.

In Michigan, the state Democratic Party, Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and a voter backed by a Democratic-aligned political action committee had challenged West’s candidacy.

Benson’s office plans to appeal Redford’s decision, a spokesperson said.

West’s campaign called the opinion a “decisive victory for democratic principles and voter choice.”

“We are grateful for this affirmation and promise to continue championing the rights of all voters,” West said in a statement.

The Michigan court opinion came a day after West lost a legal challenge to appear on the Pennsylvania ballot. It also came one day after third-party candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspended his independent campaign for the White House and endorsed Republican Donald Trump.

Story by Isabella Volmert, Associated Press

The Michigan Bureau of Elections notified the independent presidential campaign of progressive political activist and academic Cornel West that a faulty legal document will keep him off the state’s November ballot. In a letter dated Friday, Michigan’s elections chief said West’s affidavit of identity was not properly notarized. “For the reasons described below, the Department is required by law to disqualify you, and the Department will not certify you as candidate on ballots for the November 5, 2024 general election,” said the letter signed by Michigan Elections Director Jonathan Brater. The affidavit was filled out and mailed to Michigan from Colorado. The Michigan Bureau of Elections’ letter outlined four technical violations under Colorado law that, because of reciprocity between states, meant the affidavit had not been property notarized. Brater said Michigan law is strict on this point. The letter said West did not reply to an earlier request to respond to the state’s determination, but still gave the campaign another five days following the notification to do so. The bureau did not make determinations on other challenges filed by a Michigan Democratic Party activist. The West campaign said the Michigan Democratic Party and the Democratic National Committee are behind the action, which it said is based on “trivial technicalities being weaponized to distract from substantive policy debates.” West spokesperson Edwin DeJesus said the campaign is preparing a court challenge. “We are confident that these accusations will be seen for what they are—frivolous and unfounded attempts to stifle opposition and debate,” he said in an email to the Michigan Public Radio Network. One of the organizations involved in the challenge said it is not a trivial matter. “Candidates who play by the rules should be on the ballot, but Cornel West is blatantly not playing by the rules, in Michigan or anywhere else,” said Pete Kavanaugh of Clear Choice Action in an e-mail. He said the point of notarization is to ensure signers of legal documents understand them and are abiding by the law. “Michigan made the appropriate decision based on the facts,” he said. The race between Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, and former President and Republican nominee Donald Trump is expected to be very close in the swing state of Michigan. Independent and third party candidates could play a role in determining the outcome.

A challenge filed with a statewide elections board in Michigan is seeking to keep presidential candidate Cornel West off the general election ballot.

The challenge argues thousands of signatures on West’s nominating paperwork were fraudulent.

The group Clear Choice Action is backing the effort to block West from the ballot with help from lawyers with ties to the Democratic Party.

Clear Choice founder Pete Kavanaugh said there’s ample evidence of “widespread and blatant fraud.”

“When you look through these petition pages, and there are thousands of them, again, it’s close to 30,000 individual signatures, what you see are clear patterns of fraud,” Kavanaugh said.

West is running this cycle as an independent candidate.

His campaign responded to a request for comment with a statement saying it “sees these accusations as part of a broader attempt to undermine the democratic process rather than legitimate legal objections.”

“The allegations focus on procedural issues such as incomplete voter information and errors by petition circulators, disproportionately emphasizing technicalities over substantial compliance,” the statement continued.

An elections board in North Carolina recently blocked West from the ballot in that state after citing concerns about how signatures were gathered there as well.

In Michigan, West could still make the ballot despite the challenge. That’s because his campaign turned in more than twice the required number of signatures to get on the ballot.

According to the state’s rules, that means out of a randomly pulled review sample of about 750 signatures, fewer than half must actually be valid.

The challenge claims a new sample should be used if the first one doesn’t result in West’s disqualification.

West’s campaign argues the attempt is an effort “limit electoral participation.” His run is taking place at a time when even a small number of votes siphoned away from a major party candidate could sway the election.

In the 2016 presidential election, three different independent candidates gained more votes in Michigan than the difference between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Kavanaugh, however, rejected the notion that the challenge is about simply knocking off a candidate through a technicality.

“This is not about pages not being numbered right or dates being wrong in some place. This is quite irregular, right?” Kavanaugh said. “This is literally tens of thousands of people in Michigan being defrauded by having their names and signatures put on one of these petitions to use for ballot access.”

The allegations against West’s paperwork are similar to those that sank campaigns for around half of Michigan’s Republican gubernatorial candidates and many other ballot measures in 2022.

In that election cycle, paid canvassers allegedly faked thousands of signatures for numerous campaigns.

The challenge against West claims gatherers used similar tactics as those alleged in 2022, like taking turns signing fake signatures to switch up handwriting.

In 2022, the Michigan Board of State Canvassers decided not to certify affected campaigns for the ballot.

It will likely decide what to do with West’s candidacy in an upcoming meeting.