Cornel West’s presidential candidacy faces signature challenge in Michigan

A challenge filed with a statewide elections board in Michigan is seeking to keep presidential candidate Cornel West off the general election ballot.

The challenge argues thousands of signatures on West’s nominating paperwork were fraudulent.

The group Clear Choice Action is backing the effort to block West from the ballot with help from lawyers with ties to the Democratic Party.

Clear Choice founder Pete Kavanaugh said there’s ample evidence of “widespread and blatant fraud.”

“When you look through these petition pages, and there are thousands of them, again, it’s close to 30,000 individual signatures, what you see are clear patterns of fraud,” Kavanaugh said.

West is running this cycle as an independent candidate.

His campaign responded to a request for comment with a statement saying it “sees these accusations as part of a broader attempt to undermine the democratic process rather than legitimate legal objections.”

“The allegations focus on procedural issues such as incomplete voter information and errors by petition circulators, disproportionately emphasizing technicalities over substantial compliance,” the statement continued.

An elections board in North Carolina recently blocked West from the ballot in that state after citing concerns about how signatures were gathered there as well.

In Michigan, West could still make the ballot despite the challenge. That’s because his campaign turned in more than twice the required number of signatures to get on the ballot.

According to the state’s rules, that means out of a randomly pulled review sample of about 750 signatures, fewer than half must actually be valid.

The challenge claims a new sample should be used if the first one doesn’t result in West’s disqualification.

West’s campaign argues the attempt is an effort “limit electoral participation.” His run is taking place at a time when even a small number of votes siphoned away from a major party candidate could sway the election.

In the 2016 presidential election, three different independent candidates gained more votes in Michigan than the difference between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Kavanaugh, however, rejected the notion that the challenge is about simply knocking off a candidate through a technicality.

“This is not about pages not being numbered right or dates being wrong in some place. This is quite irregular, right?” Kavanaugh said. “This is literally tens of thousands of people in Michigan being defrauded by having their names and signatures put on one of these petitions to use for ballot access.”

The allegations against West’s paperwork are similar to those that sank campaigns for around half of Michigan’s Republican gubernatorial candidates and many other ballot measures in 2022.

In that election cycle, paid canvassers allegedly faked thousands of signatures for numerous campaigns.

The challenge against West claims gatherers used similar tactics as those alleged in 2022, like taking turns signing fake signatures to switch up handwriting.

In 2022, the Michigan Board of State Canvassers decided not to certify affected campaigns for the ballot.

It will likely decide what to do with West’s candidacy in an upcoming meeting.