Arizona and Maine are presumably off the table unless the US Supreme court interferes. I think a lot of states have been waiting for the first bricks to fall. There could be several more that disqualify Trump’s eligibility.
There are traditional Red and Blue states, their Electoral votes are expected to go to the Democratic and Republican nominees. Arkansas for example usually votes for a Republican presidential candidate.
The Swing states usually decide elections.
How does Trump’s disqualifications in some states change the equation?
At what point statistically is his candidacy considered unviable? Trump is not the Rep nominee yet. He may not get the nomination at the convention if too many states reject his eligibility.
Have the number crunchers forecast how this will play out?
Any of the big swing states (Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas) that went for Trump in 2020 would make it very difficult. More than one would make it almost impossible.
Apropos of nothing, somewhat shocked that Texas was officially listed as a swing state
It won’t happen in a swing state or a red state, will it? My bet is it will only happen in safely blue states, a correct and heroic gesture that will do nothing to alter his electoral chances, but may very well galvanize his support in the swing states. (In other words, Democrats just shooting themselves in the foot as usual.)
These days about maybe 10 states decide elections and the other 40 or so dutifully perform their respective red or blue duties as appropriate. So I wouldn’t think it would take that many to tip 270 electoral votes.
Listened to a guy on You Tube the other day (can’t remember who or find the video), he compared this to Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court ruled in RvW that the US Government was interfering with states rights. When it comes to elections, the states are allowed to control elections per the Constitution (Article I, Section 4, Clause 1). He said the court should use the same guidelines in this case as they have in others, let the states make their own decisions. But as we have seen a lot of recently, when it comes to all thing Republican, let’s twist the laws to benefit the party, not the people.
As I’ve pointed out many times before, this won’t be the only effect. Some people turn out to vote for the whole ballot, but many more people turn out to vote only for President, and then while they’re there vote for whatever else happens to be on the ballot. You see this very clearly in the difference in turnout between Presidential years and off-year elections. But if Trump isn’t on the ballot in, say, Colorado, then nobody’s going to turn out to vote for Trump. If Republicans end up with off-year turnout numbers but Democrats get typical Presidential election turnout numbers, then Democrats would easily sweep all of the elections in the state, even the ones in heavily-red districts. And there are a lot of those: Lauren Boebert, for example, is from Colorado.
Or let’s say California does it. No difference in the Presidential election; California was going to go Democratic there anyway. But California is currently sending 12 Republicans to the House. Flip all of those, and that by itself would be more than enough to flip the House as a whole. That’s huge.
It’d probably make a difference in a number of Senate seats, too, though I’d have to dig deeper to see how many Republican senators there are from “blue” states, and how many of them are up for re-election this cycle.
California has just stated Trump will remain on the ballot.
So, it’s going to be unclear if Blue states will successfully get him off the ballot. But as mentioned, it really only matters if the SC declines to decide on this, or rules that he MUST be on ballots in every state, or if he is removed from one of the key purple states. Lots up in the air right now.
It adds to the chaos of some states banning him from the ballot and others not - leading up to a significant (at least for the '24 election) decision by the Supreme Court.
In the murky world of Constitutional law, I don’t think anything could stop Republicans from running an “unpledged” slate of electors who then turn around and vote for Trump.
In 1960, Mississippi and Alabama elected a total of 13 unpledged Democratic electors who ended up casting their votes for Virginia Sen. Harry F. Byrd Jr. Those votes were accepted by Congress.
Whether Congress would accept an electoral vote for Trump from a state that declared him ineligible is not a prediction I care to make.
I agree with you. A crazy quilt of eligibility will just add to the expected chaos and likely violence. I’d rather the Supreme Court make a binding blanket decision, not so much whether Colorado or Maine can restrict trump from the ballot, but whether or not (and I’d prefer not) he is eligible to be president at all due to his attempts at insurrection.
Why? The record of some states in conducting fair elections is appalling. This control is the Republican Party’s chief weapon in their agenda to undermine democracy in this country.
They can control their elections, so long as they operate within constitutional requirements. So, if they cast their electoral votes for an ineligible candidate—ineligible per Federal law, same as a 25 year old is ineligible—tough shit.
It would be quite pure karma if the justification SCOTUS needed to override a state’s right to exclude a candidate from the ballot was found somewhere in the parts of the Voters Rights Act they nullified.
I have read a couple times the defense of Trump regarding his being removed from ballots due to his role in leading the insurrection on Jan 6 - “he has not been convicted of insurrection” - is that pertinent to disqualifying someone from appearing on a ballot - if they’ve been convicted or not?
I mean, we all saw and heard with our own eyes and ears what he did that sad day, and it sure smells like insurrection to me, but is there any legal teeth to that statement that he’d need to be ‘convicted’, presumably in a court of law, before there is a case for keeping him off ballots?
That’s what we’re all wondering. The Supreme Court might rule that. Or they might rule something completely different, or they might not rule at all and leave us still wondering.