Robert F. Kennedy Jr. filed a last-ditch federal lawsuit Thursday in an effort to get his name off Michigan’s presidential ballot. That’s as local clerks are already finalizing ballots for printing.

Kennedy exhausted his appeals in Michigan courts before turning now to federal courts — even though the state’s legal deadline to get ballots to printers is passed. Angela Benander, a spokesperson for Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, told the Michigan Public Radio Network the filing will not change current plans.

“Clerks are currently in the process of printing ballots to ensure absentee ballots will be delivered to voters by the federal deadlines,” said Benander. She said those deadlines ensure absentee ballots are in the mail to overseas and military voters in time for them to be returned and counted.

The Michigan Supreme Court on Monday held Kennedy’s name would remain on the ballot, which settled the matter in state courts.

Kennedy has had mixed results in having his name stricken from ballots in states where he has already qualified. He suspended his campaign last month and endorsed former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee.

Michigan Secretary of State said Kennedy waited until it was too late to withdraw as the nominee of the Natural Law Party of Michigan. Kennedy sought and accepted the minor party nomination as a way to get on the Michigan ballot. Withdrawing now would leave the party without a presidential candidate.

But in the lawsuit filed Monday with the U.S. District Court for Michigan’s eastern district, Kennedy argued the state is violating his constitutional freedom of speech and freedom of association rights.

“Keeping Mr. Kennedy off the ballot will also cause no harm to the public,” said Kennedy’s filing. “Conversely, leaving Mr. Kennedy’s name will serve only to mislead voters, upend election and ballot integrity…”

In the filing, Kennedy also complained that he is being held to a different standard than President Joe Biden, who exited the presidential race on July 21 and cleared the way for Vice President Kamala Harris to be nominated.

But there is a critical distinction. Biden was in the race and the presumptive nominee prior to stepping aside. But he was never formally nominated and, thus, never accepted the nomination.

Harris was waiting in the wings when Biden withdrew his name from consideration following a disastrous debate performance against Trump. She was formally nominated by the Democratic National Convention on August 6th, which placed her on Michigan’s ballot.

The state will now have an opportunity to respond to Kennedy’s lawsuit and motion to remove his name. But the court does not have to accept the case or take any other action.

A Michigan Court of Claims judge acted quickly Tuesday to deny Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s request to be removed from the state’s presidential ballot. That’s after Kennedy suspended his campaign last week to back Republican nominee Donald Trump.

Kennedy wants a court to reverse the determination of election officials in the Secretary of State’s office that he missed the deadline for removing his name as the nominee of the Natural Law Party of Michigan. Kennedy is trying to end his candidacy in Michigan and other swing states where he could siphon support from former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee.

“Plaintiff, a public figure, does not want to represent to the citizens of Michigan that he is vying for their votes for the position of President of the United States,” said Kennedy’s legal filing. “Keeping his name on the ballot against his wishes compels this speech and subjects him to derision, anger, reputational harm, and loss of good will by those who would vote for him based on this speech and later find out their vote was wasted and in vain.”

Kennedy argued the deadline cited by the state elections bureau applies only to down-ballot races and not to candidates for president.

Court of Claims Judge Christopher Yates dispatched the case very quickly, noting the urgency of resolving election-related questions this late in the cycle. Yates wrote the law is “clear and conclusive” that election officials in the Secretary of State’s office are not empowered to go along with Kennedy’s “self-serving act”

“Elections are not just games,” he wrote, “and the Secretary of State is not obligated to honor the whims of candidates for public office.”

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel praised the ruling.

“Michigan election law in this instance is unambiguous and the Department of State made the correct decision,” she said in a written statement. “…The law does not apply less because a candidate changes their plans. I appreciate the Court making a quick and wise ruling on this matter.”

Kennedy’s Michigan attorneys did not reply to a request for comment or plans to appeal.

If history is any guide, it is highly unlikely that Kennedy would win Michigan’s 15 electoral votes. The last third-party candidate to win Michigan was former President Teddy Roosevelt, who left the Republican Party to run as the candidate of the Progressive “Bull Moose” Party in 1912. That helped Democratic nominee Woodrow Wilson unseat Republican incumbent President William Howard Taft.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will remain on the Michigan presidential ballot, despite his announcement Friday that he is suspending his campaign and backing former President Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s nominee.

“Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign reached out to the Michigan Bureau of Elections late this afternoon in an attempt to withdraw his name,” said bureau spokesperson Cheri Hardmon, adding that the campaign was informed the deadline to remove his name from the ballot had passed.

Kennedy is on the state ballot as the nominee of the Natural Law Party of Michigan. That party’s state nominating convention was held back in April.

Hardmon said the party could have held a new nominating convention any time until the state’s August presidential primary.

“The Natural Law Party held their convention to select electors for Robert Kennedy Jr.,” she said. “They cannot meet at this point to select new electors since it’s past the primary.”

Kennedy’s quixotic campaign sought the Natural Law Party of Michigan nomination because it was easier and less expensive than gathering thousands of signatures required to get on the state ballot as an unaffiliated independent candidate.

Now, Kennedy said, he wants to be removed from the ballot in states where his candidacy could hurt Trump’s chances. Michigan is considered a swing state, and recent polls show Trump in a close race with Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris.

The Natural Law Party seeks to apply the principles of transcendental meditation to government. Kennedy has no prior affiliation with the party or the transcendental meditation movement. The advantage of a big name for a minor party is the likelihood of winning enough votes to automatically qualify for ballot access in future elections.

The Natural Law Party of Michigan and the Kennedy campaign did not respond to messages seeking comment.

Local clerks play a critical roll in ensuring free and fair elections.

City and township clerks hold three major responsibilities – keeping track of records like birth, death and marriage certificates, and overseeing financial operations and local elections.

According to Canton Township Clerk Michael Siegrist, of the 1,240 Michigan township clerks up for election in November — accounting for roughly 82% of the state’s 1,516 local election officials — 118 have no clerk candidates on the ballot.

“We’ve never seen anything like this in history, 9.5% of all clerk races this year will have NOBODY elected.” he wrote on X earlier this month. “Why doesn’t anyone want to do this job? How does a state deal with such a massive labor shortage? Who will run elections in these communities?”

Today on Created Equal host Stephen Henderson was joined by Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Ottawa County Clerk Justin Roebuck and Michigan Advance reporter Jon King to discuss how to protect election integrity in cities or townships without clerk candidates.

Subscribe to Created Equal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, NPR.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

Guests 

Jocelyn Benson is the secretary of state for Michigan. She says the state is prepared with a back-up plan when there aren’t clerks to fill positions.

“When there is a vacancy at any point — or if a clerk fails to do their duty, their legal duty, under the law — we at the state level have supervisory authority where we can appoint someone or come in,” she said. “Oftentimes that’ll involve working with folks in the community to identify someone [like] local officials, mayors, township supervisors, and county clerks. [They] also have different elements of supervisory power over local jurisdictions to make sure the job gets done. So even if there’s a vacancy, we still have ways of making sure the work happens, [so] that democracy continues to go smoothly.”

Jon King is a reporter for Michigan Advance and the author of a recent article about the state’s local clerk candidate shortage. He says the additional duties given to clerks means there’s a larger personal cost. 

“The people that are administering these elections are, I think, getting somewhat swamped. I mean, we talked about early voting starting this weekend…I saw several online posts from clerks who were at their early voting areas, and they have their kids in the other room, coloring,” he said. “And, [on] one hand, you go, ‘Oh, that’s cute.’ On the other hand, you realize that there is a cost, a personal cost to be paid.”

Justin Roebuck is the clerk for Ottawa County, Michigan. He says clerks work with a system of municipal checks and balances, meaning that those who run elections know their community very deeply. 

“I’ve been a county clerk for a decade, and the people that I work with as my township’s clerk, are experts in their field, but they’re also experts in their communities,” he said. “You know, they know their communities.”

Listen to Created Equal with host Stephen Henderson weekdays from 9-10 a.m. ET on 101.9 WDET and streaming on-demand.

Early in-person voting opened across Michigan this past weekend ahead of next week’s primary elections.

According to Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, around 6,400 people voted Saturday and around 4,200 people came to the polls on Sunday.

At a press briefing Monday, Benson said over 1.6 million people in the state have requested an absentee ballot. Meanwhile, around 700,000 ballots have been returned.

David Becker with the Center for Election Innovation and Research said spreading voting out across a span of days, rather than allowing it only on Election Day, is better for ballot access and election security.

“Concentrating all voting into a single 12- or 14-hour period on a single Tuesday creates a single point of potential failure for a lot of things to happen. Could be traffic. It could be weather. It could be a power outage. It could be some kind some kind of intentional attack on the system, a cyber event or something else,” Becker said.

Election officials said the only notable issue so far during early voting came Saturday morning when a State of Michigan server became overloaded.

Benson said backup plans allowed voting to continue uninterrupted and that she’s confident it won’t happen again.

The early voting period is part of a series of recent election changes that also allow local clerks to start some pre-processing, but not counting, of absentee ballots ahead of Election Day.

Sterling Heights City Clerk Melanie Ryska said that goes a long way toward getting election results available faster.

“With pre-processing or early tabulation, we hope to work and alleviate some of that work and that strain we have on Election Day. That will give us an opportunity to focus on the ballots that are being returned the day before or on Election Day, to process those on Election Day,” Ryska said.

For comparison, Ryska said it took her team over 27 hours during the 2020 presidential election cycle to finish going through all of the absentee ballots it received.

Election officials are hoping to avoid a repeat this year of tensions from the fallout of the 2020 election, when Michigan became a focal point of efforts to overturn the results of the presidential race.

Michigan saw several policy changes following that experience. This is the first major cycle when they’ll be tested.

Aside from creating an eight day in-person early-voting period and allowing for some pre-processing of ballots, new Michigan election laws further criminalized the intimidation of election workers.

“We’ve also been running scenario planning exercises with law enforcement, first responders, and our clerks all across the state to make sure that we’ve got a rapid response plan in place if anything does erupt or occur on Election Day so that we can be ready,” Benson said.