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Independent presidential candidate Cornel West has received another win from a Michigan court.
On Friday, the Michigan Court of Appeals (COA) upheld an earlier decision by the Court of Claims that West should appear on the ballot. West had initially been disqualified by the Michigan Bureau of Elections on Aug. 16 after determining that his affidavit of identity (AOI), among other issues, was not properly notarized. Court of Claims Judge James Robert Redford, however, ruled that presidential candidates seeking to run without party affiliation were not obligated to file an AOI, a decision the COA affirmed.
Michigan panel OKs Cornel West for November ballot, while legal maneuvering continues
“In sum, we agree with the Court of Claims: as a candidate who has been nominated (via qualifying petition) for the office of President of the United States, West is not required to file an AOI under the plain and unambiguous language of MCL 168.558(1),” stated the COA opinion, citing that portion of Michigan Election Law that pertains to nominating petitions.
The challenge to West’s AOI was filed by elections lawyer and former Michigan Democratic Party Chair Mark Brewer, on behalf of Rosa Holliday, a longtime civil rights and community activist.
“The Court made several legal and factual errors. We are appealing,” Brewer told the Michigan Advance after Friday’s COA ruling was released.
Brewer also has filed an appeal on a decision Monday by the bipartisan Michigan Board of State Canvassers to approve West’s ballot petitions, despite claims they were “rife with forged signatures,” a decision Brewer said was anathema to the canvassers sworn duty.
“I think it’s outrageous that they not only refused to investigate forgery of circulator signatures, but they put a candidate on the ballot…who everybody knows has thousands of forged signatures, and he just got rewarded for forgery,” Brewer told the Advance on Monday.
Those petition signatures, and the legal maneuvering to get West on the ballot in Michigan and other states, has drawn scrutiny to the web of far-right attorneys that have been assisting the West campaign.
As the Advance reported Thursday, West has been represented by a slew of attorneys with connections to Republican politics, many of them members of the Republican National Lawyers Association (RNLA), as well as working for firms with clients that include the Republican National Committee (RNC), the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), the Charlie Kirk-run Turning Point USA political action committee (PAC), and American Values 2024, a super PAC supporting the presidential campaign of independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who recently dropped out of the race and endorsed former Trump’s campaign to regain the White House.
“It’s to try to steal votes from the [Vice President Kamala] Harris campaign,” said elections attorney and former Michigan Democratic Party Co-Chair Melvin Butch Hollowell.
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