A lot of people are arguing that it shouldn’t be enforced. Or that it be enforced only after it goes through a Federal court process which itself is not defined within the 14th amendment.
Colorado declared Trump guilty of insurrection and, as under the 14th, ineligible to be on the ballot. And if they are the only State which does so, so be it. That’s how the law is written.
ETA: Well, CO and ME. Forgot about ME.
Well feel free to go and argue with those people. I’m pretty sure none of them are in this thread.
To your point, I thought this was the Colorado thread. I’ll withdraw for a more appropriate venue.
Again, I know it’s not defined within 14A, and that’s the entire problem. It’s a bug, not a feature.
Maybe a federal court process is the only answer, I don’t know. But we need something.
We have something. The 10th amendment.
So please answer my questions.
Again, please explain what established processes ensure that
(a) there is consistency across all states about who is eligible to be on the ballot for a presidential election, because that is not happening, and because anything else is clearly ridiculous;
(b) what is the process under law to correct malicious misapplication of 14A, other than 2/3 majority of Congress which means “none”?
If you cannot answer these questions under the current Constitution, then the Constitution is not fit for purpose.
There are no processes. As you say, it’s a bug.
But until you amend the constitution to debug it (a process just as cumbersome as what we’re dealing with here), you’re stuck trying to fix things using a buggy interface. So either fix it in as half-assed a manner as you can, or give up and burn the place down.
At this point, I’m pushing for the former, but would be okay with the latter.
Once again. These bans are for primary ballots, not the general election. Folks can still scribble in their choice for the actual elections. (Holy shit Steve - talk about hanging chads, smudged squares; you’re inviting wholesale slaughter over signatures, cursive vs. block printing, full vs. partial names, missing middle initials…).
And I sincerely hope the SC swallow their pride over originalism / strict textualism and essentially invent a process. I would prefer a SC less favorable to Trump do this, but somebody has to do it, and it’s not going to be Congress.
I think people seriously underestimate how critical this juncture is. People are going to lose faith in democracy and the rule of law if this coming election has a bunch of states inconsistently omitting Trump or Biden from the ballot.
There is no “once again” about it. We all know the way it works. You are confusing “is” with “ought”. To suggest that this is a sensible way for a national election to proceed in a functioning democracy is preposterous.
I’ll repeat, if Trump (for good reason) and Biden (for malicious reasons) are excluded for ballots inconsistently in a random hodgepodge of states, this democracy is on the verge of failure.
Any state in which it would survive is going to vote deep flaming red anyway.
Not necessarily. There are states that are massively gerrymandered in in favor of Republicans. In any event, that’s not an argument that it’s an acceptable way to run a democracy.
Agreed that it’s not good. Agreed that the ship of state is veering into uncharted waters with reefs and ridges lurking on all sides.
Since our national election process is essentially handled individually by the states and the two parties, up to the point of nomination, then part of the fix would have to be to change that. National primaries, or individual state primaries, or regional primaries, some other process, whatever seems to work, but governed by federal law. This would require, would it not, a constitutional amendment, as @Horatius suggested upthread? Such an amendment would never be passed, it couldn’t even get through congress. And what do we do in the meantime, with this issue that needs to be resolved yesterday? All we can do at present is to let the issue play out in the courts.
I wouldn’t. It’s badly flawed in some aspects, certainly, and certainly doesn’t deserve the worship as the received word (of a group of people 250 years ago) that it gets. Getting something better at this point is going to be an extremely painful, probably violent, process.
We have varying state laws which dictate that a person cannot be on the ballot because they didn’t receive enough signatures on a petition and the Republic, somehow, survives this continued onslaught. In Alabama, one needs 500 signatures (Dem or Rep). In neighboring Florida, one needs 56,000 if they are a Republican, none at all for Democrats. In Georgia, don’t even bother as they don’t have a petition-for-ballot-access process at all for either party.
I agree with this 100%. SCOTUS must act to resolve this for all states. We stand at the brink.
So your argument is that out tolerance for inconsequential differences in state laws implies that highly consequential differences must be just fine too? I find that unconvincing.
Not too sure why this is inconsequential, given that there are laws which allow Republicans to gain access to the ballot and Democrats no access (other than through the party nomination process). Seems pretty consequential to me! How many FL Democrats have been blocked from the ballot simply because FL law doesn’t allow Democrats access to the ballots, other than through the official party processes?
What I don’t buy is an argument which relies on the assumption that one person, Donald Trump, is so special that we must contort ourselves to ignore the Constitution and deny not just the 14th amendment, but also the 10th amendment. As well as historical precedent, and common sense.
You can keep repeating the straw man that this is about whether 14A should apply to Trump. It’s not, it’s about process, and about running a functional democracy controlled by the rule of law. You mention 10A again but you still haven’t answered the questions that I’ve twice asked you.
Exactly.