A Michigan judge ruled that independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. must remain on the state’s ballot despite his request to remove himself.
On Tuesday, Sept. 3, a judge determined that Kennedy would stay on Michigan’s presidential ballot as an independent candidate even though he had already suspended his campaign after Kennedy sued the state to be taken off.
Kennedy announced on Friday, Aug. 23, that he officially endorsed former President Donald Trump for president yet would not be dropping out of the race. The independent candidate said that he was instead simply suspending his campaign and would withdraw his name from the swing state ballots. Since then, Kennedy has filed those motions and proceeded to campaign for Trump, but it didn’t go as planned.
Prior to Michigan, Wisconsin’s elections commission rejected Kennedy’s request to withdraw from the ballot and voted to keep his name on it. Wisconsin voted in the same session to block efforts by Democrats to keep independent candidate Cornel West and Green Party candidate Jill Stein from appearing on the ballot.
Kennedy also sued North Carolina to try and have his name taken off the state’s ballot, but the board of elections determined it was too late to change the ballot since the printing process had already begun. On the same day, Michigan tossed out his request, Kennedy sued Wisconsin for its initial rejection last month.
All of the roadblocks have apparently frustrated Kennedy, who has since pivoted and abandoned his original plan, as reported on Thursday, Sept. 5, instructing his supporters in all states to now vote for Trump.
The following day, Kennedy appeared on NewsNation and said, “If we’re going to accomplish the mission that I set out to accomplish when I got into this campaign: end the censorship – end the surveillance, to get out of the Ukraine war and unravel the war machine, end the chronic disease epidemic – the only way to do that is to get President Trump in the White House and me into Washington.” Kennedy says he and Trump will “pull out all the stops to make sure that happens.”
