In their latest attack on voting rights, Democrats are attempting to remove Cornel West from the Michigan ballot due to notarial formalities
On Friday, the Michigan Bureau of Elections voted to disqualify independent presidential candidate Dr. Cornel West and his running mate Melina Abdullah from the November presidential election due to alleged violations related to problems with West’s campaign materials.
Democratic leaders are trying to remove the West Abdullah campaign from the ballot despite the fact that it submitted nearly 30,000 signatures, more than twice the number needed to appear on the ballot in the state of Michigan. In fact, none of the issues cited by the office have anything to do with collecting signatures or submitting false, fraudulent or untrue information.
In an August 16 letter to the West campaign, Jonathan Brater, chief of elections at the U.S. Department of State, wrote that the department was “legally obligated to disqualify West” based on a “verification of the affidavit of identity” that the West campaign submitted to the department on June 17, 2024.
According to the letter, the West campaign submitted an affidavit of identity that was notarized by Dana L. Manning, “an official in the State of Colorado.” However, the Michigan Bureau of Elections claimed that “Dana L. Manning’s attempted authentication” was “inconsistent with Colorado law on at least four counts.”
The alleged points in the affidavit include:
- the document contains “unfilled gaps”,
- the certificate allegedly “does not indicate which notarial act was carried out”,
- the document allegedly did not contain the notary’s “official title”
- and the “notary’s stamp was on a separate sheet of paper and was not attached to the notary’s certificate.”
After listing these minor issues, the letter from Michigan State warned the West team that they had only five days to appeal the disqualification if they “have evidence to refute the points listed above.”
The disqualification of West and Abdullah is part of a nationwide anti-democratic campaign by the Democratic Party aimed at barring independent and third-party candidates from the election.
Friday’s decision was the result of anti-democratic legal challenges brought by high-ranking Democratic Party officials Rosa Holliday and Mark Brewer. Holliday, a former education and training coordinator at General Motors, is a political scientist in Bay City, Michigan, and has been a campaigner and Democratic Party official for decades.
Brewer, who filed the lawsuit against West on behalf of Holliday, is a partner at the Michigan law firm Goodman Acker and was elected chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party (MDP) in 1995. At the same time as his election as chairman, he also became a member of the Democratic National Committee, serving in both positions until 2013, according to a biography on his law firm’s website.
During his tenure as MDP chair and on the DNC, Brewer also served as “President of the Association of State Democratic Chairs” from 2005 to 2009. In that position, he “worked closely with DNC Chair Howard Dean” and was “instrumental in the election of President Obama in 2008,” the website states.
Following Friday’s decision to block West, Brewer stated on his X account under the handle @MarkBrewerDems: “This is the right decision: every candidate must follow the rules to appear on the ballot in Michigan, and Cornel West is no exception.”
As of this writing, the West campaign team has not released a statement on Friday’s decision. This reporter contacted the West campaign team but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
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In his article on X, Socialist Equality Party presidential candidate Joseph Kishore condemned the undemocratic actions of the Democratic Party.
As the Socialist Equality Party’s presidential candidate, I condemn the Democratic Party’s efforts to ban Cornel West from the Michigan ballot. Despite our well-documented political differences with West, the SEP supports the right of workers and youth to vote for all third-party and independent candidates.
The removal of West from the Michigan ballot because of what was supposed to be a minor technicality with the notarization exposes the Democrats’ claim that they are running in this election to defend the people’s democratic rights and right to vote as a lie. In reality, Democrats are working with Republicans to block any challenge to their dominance by either party and to push their shared agenda of imperialist war abroad and war against the working class at home.
The SEP defends the democratic rights of the working class by organizing a frontal assault on the wealth and privileges of the financial oligarchy. The wealth of the billionaires must be expropriated and the giant corporations transformed into public enterprises. This is part of the socialist transformation of economic life in the United States and around the world.
In addition to Brewer and Holliday’s lawsuit, Clear Choice Action, a political action committee formed by billionaires close to Democrats and former Biden administration officials, also filed a complaint against the West campaign last month, alleging that “several thousand” signatures were “forged.” Last week, Clear Choice’s lawyers succeeded in blocking right-wing anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from appearing on the New York ballot.
In a report on Clear Choice’s lawsuit against West in Michigan last month, Detroit News wrote that lawyers “from the Southfield-based firm Goodman Acker,” including “Mark Brewer,” were “working on the complaint for Clear Choice Action,” which was signed by “Rosa Holliday.”
