It’s curious. The same Democratic Party that has feverishly tried to keep leftist third-party presidential candidates off November’s ballot is now fighting like hell to keep Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on.

On Tuesday, elections officials in two critical swing states — Michigan and Wisconsin — decreed that the Kennedy family scion who last week suspended his independent run and endorsed Donald Trump’s presidential campaign will remain on November’s ballot. He may face similar problems in other battleground states, such as Nevada and North Carolina. 

‘His Name Will Remain’

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a hyper-partisan Democrat, said Kennedy must remain on the Nov. 5 general election ballot. 

“Minor party candidates cannot withdraw, so his name will remain on the ballot,” Benson spokeswoman Cheri Hardmon told the Detroit News in an email. 

Kennedy was running under the banner of the Natural Law Party in Michigan. 

The third-party candidate quickly acted in asking several states to take his name out of the running. Michigan just as quickly said no, with Benson asserting that the timing in state presidential elector law doesn’t allow for the Natural Law Party to remove Kennedy. The small political party has already held its convention to elect its electors, Hardmon told the Detroit publication. 

“They cannot meet at this point to select new electors since it’s past the primary,” she said. 

‘Mechanism to Exclude’

Benson’s strict interpretation of Michigan elector law might have something to do with the fact that polls — including Kennedy campaign internal polling — show RFK Jr.’s presence on the presidential ballot would drain more votes from Republican Trump than Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s freshly minted presidential candidate.

Benson, an extreme liberal in a state governed by extreme liberals, has repeatedly been caught abusing and manipulating Michigan election law. She pushed her political agenda in trying to remove leftist third-party presidential candidate Cornel West from Michigan’s November ballot. 

Judge James R. Redford ruled over the weekend that, contrary to the Michigan Bureau of Elections decision, West’s campaign had presented an adequate number of petition signatures to secure his place on the ballot. Benson joined forces with the state Democratic Party and a leftist political action committee in arguing that the independent candidate should be denied ballot certification because his campaign did not properly notarize an “affidavit of identity.” The judge ruled such affidavits are not required. 

“The Court respectfully concludes the SOS and Director of the Bureau of Elections (DBOE) misapplied the law in finding otherwise,” Redford wrote in his brief but direct order. “The AOIs [Affidavits of Identity] the candidates filed cannot serve as a mechanism to exclude them from the ballot.”

Benson has said she will appeal the decision. 

“This ruling is not just a legal victory — it is a moral victory for everyone who believes in the sanctity of the democratic process,” West said in a statement. “Our campaign submitted over 26,000 signatures, significantly more than required, which the court recognized as a legitimate expression of the people’s will.”

But the “people’s will” is subservient to the Democratic Party’s insatiable thirst for power. West represents a threat to the Dems’ prospects in must-win Michigan, with the potential to siphon enough votes away from liberals not sold on “joy” candidate Harris to help give Trump a Great Lakes State victory. 

‘Political Calculation’

In Wisconsin, the politically divided regulator of elections has also declared RFK Jr. must remain on the November ballot, while narrowly rejecting the Democratic National Committee’s challenge to the leftist Green Party’s presidential ticket. 

The six-member Wisconsin Elections Commission, comprised of three Democrats and three Republicans, voted 5-1 on Tuesday to add Kennedy to the Badger State ballot, despite his campaign’s request to remove it. WEC administrators pointed to a state statute that they say prohibits qualifying candidates from declining nomination. 

Bob Spindell, one of the three Republicans on the commission, was the lone dissenting vote. He told The Federalist in an interview Tuesday night that the state statute on the issue is open to commission discretion. The commission used its discretion to add RFK Jr.’s name to the list of presidential candidates in the general election. 

Two of the commission’s three Democrats, meanwhile, attempted to block Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and her running mate, Butch Ware, from the ballot. The day before, the Wisconsin Supreme Court decided not to take up what Spindell described as the DNC’s “facetious” complaint to undercut the Greens’ challenge to Democratic Party votes.  

A DNC representative claimed that the Green Party’s candidates were disqualified from Wisconsin’s presidential election because there are no Green Party members represented in state offices or in the legislature. So the party has no one to nominate presidential electors. Legal experts argued it was a bogus claim and a twisted reading of the law. 

“I think it’s purely a political move,” Spindell said. “All this stuff is political calculation.” 

The math is quite clear. Stein, the Green Party presidential candidate in 2016, grabbed some 31,000 votes in the swing state election. Democrats complained Stein’s tiny fraction of the vote was more than enough to turn Wisconsin red for Trump, who beat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the state by less than 21,000 votes. They learned their lesson. In 2020, the self-proclaimed protectors of democracy successfully kept the Green Party ticket off the ballot with a dubious complaint. Democrat Joe Biden, interestingly, claimed victory over Trump by less than 21,000 votes. 

The Democrats also tried to keep West off the Wisconsin ballot, but the commission voted 5-1 to add the independent presidential candidate’s name to the list. 

West, the Green Party candidates, and the two major party players, will be joined by the Libertarian Party and Constitution Party contestants, which traditionally draw conservative-leaning voters. The Republican Party did not challenge their placement on the ballot. GOP-tied attorneys have worked to help West get on ballots, including in battleground Arizona.

RFK Jr., son of slain former U.S. Sen. Bobby Kennedy and the nephew of assassinated President John F. Kennedy, was a lifelong Democrat until last October, when he left the party in disgust. He said he felt betrayed that the party of the Kennedys is not the Democratic Party of today. In his speech on Friday, he called out Democrats for subverting democracy through the coronation of Harris as the party’s presidential nominee following its soft coup of political albatross, President Joe Biden. 

“[The party] deployed DNC-aligned judges to throw me and other candidates off the ballot and to throw President Trump in jail,” Kennedy said. “It ran a sham primary that was rigged to prevent any serious challenge to President Biden. Then, when a predictably bungled debate performance precipitated the palace coup against President Biden, the same shadowy DNC operatives appointed his successor — also without an election.”

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Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.