A federal judge has refused Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s request to remove his name from Michigan’s presidential ballot.
Kennedy was seeking an injunction to force the Michigan secretary of state to remove him from the state's ballots after he suspended his campaign for president and endorsed the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump.
The decision could be consequential if the Michigan election is as close as current polls indicate, because Kennedy's presence on the ballot could pull votes from the two major parties.
The order Wednesday by U.S. District Court Judge Denise Page Hood is a relief to election officials since ballots are already at the printers. Changes now would cost millions of dollars and further delay getting absentee ballots mailed to military and overseas voters.
Kennedy sought and accepted the presidential nomination from the Natural Law Party of Michigan before suspending his campaign.
Hood's order affirmed the Michigan secretary of state’s holding that Kennedy missed the deadline to drop out and that it would unfairly leave the Natural Law Party of Michigan without a nominee.
Kennedy’s attorney had no comment, including on whether there might be an appeal. If he does not challenge the decision, that would put an end to the legal controversy that wound through Michigan state courts before landing before the federal court.
Page wrote the case should have been over after Kennedy lost at the Michigan Supreme Court.
Kennedy, she wrote, “now pleads before this Court seeking a second bite at the apple, to which he is not entitled.”
Kennedy is also trying to pull his name from other battleground state ballots.
