On September 9, the Michigan Supreme Court refused to hear the Democratic Party’s appeal in West v Michigan Secretary of State. The two lower levels of state court hade kept Cornel West on the ballot. The Secretary of State accepted those decisions, but the Democratic Party had intervened in the caes and had filed an appeal. The issue was whether some paperwork had been properly notarized. The lower courts had ruled that the paperwork wasn’t even needed, so any problem with notarization was not relevant.

The Democratic Party had also argued that some of the voters who signed the West petition had been deceived by the circulators.