There’s the thing.
There would be a variety of legal and constitutional hurdles to get Trump on the ballot of any particular state, but nothing would prevent 50.1% of a state’s voters to write him in as their choice for President. If that should occur, nobody has any idea what might happen if the electors for a state attempt to get certified for the electoral college vote.
I just hope it doesn’t come to that.
My understanding is that there are various hurdles to being a write-in candidate in most states. Some don’t allow write-ins at all, others may require some kind of preregistration or they won’t count the write-in votes.
I worked at the local elections office in 2016 as a member of the Elections Board (glorified letter opener). After removing the ballot from the envelope, we needed to examine them for certain things not allowed. I never saw any of those, but I did see many write-ins for either Bernie Sanders or Evan McMullin. As far as I know, they never counted those write-ins. We don’t have any kind of registration for write-ins here in Oregon, but I think the write-in candidate has to request their votes to be counted. Maybe have to pay, I don’t know.
PS Sanders clearly beat McMullin on the ballots I examined, although I didn’t keep a count.
If only.
This seems likely, particularly given the rate at which ‘loyal to the Constitution’ officers are being removed. Those remaining will declare themselves, in effect, guardians of the status quo. If Donald produces a document that states that Due to the Present Emergency he is Constitutionally Bound to Remain President, they’ll say ‘yes sir’ and take Pritzker (or whoever gets elected) to the airfield for immediate transfer to CECOT.
Yep. Anyone shaky on loyalty to Donald still remaining in service, will have been posted to serve in the ongoing Iran war, months before January 20, 2029 dawns.
Many have tried to help that poster understand this. None have succeeded. He persists in believing that it IS magic.
What he insists in believing is that Donald Trump is not magic. He’s not going to get the Supreme Court to say the 22nd amendment doesn’t apply to him, or run as vice president and then get the president to resign, or do the same thing with the Spealer of the House, or just run and dare anyone to stop him, or win a write-in campaign, or “declare an emergency” that allows him to become a dictator, or orchestrate a military takeover of the government, or any of the other cockamamie doomsday scenarios people have dreamed up.
He’s a mentally ill octogenarian that two-thirds of the country hates, not a master schemer beloved by the volk.
No one is claiming he is.
We’re claiming that he has no conscience, principles, or anything else that would keep him from working to hold power until the day he drops.
And peripherally, that dozens of confederates who profit from his conduct are supporting him in that goal. Together they can disregard both law and honor, and create a dictatorship.
As has happened many times in history. No magical document will prevent it. Laws cannot prevent it because lawless people—surprise!—disregard laws.
.
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ETA: You changed your post. So:
You rely, at the end of the re-edited post, on his age. Several have said in this recent iteration of the argument that due to his age and health, it’s MUCH less likely that Trump will succeed in holding onto power (in what would be a coup, by whatever means it’s accomplished).
But that doesn’t mean that a younger, healthier President couldn’t turn the US into something like Russia, with a joke “Constitution” and a powerless Legislature and Court system.
Of course we know now that it’s very, very doable.
I’m confused.
I see @DWMarch 's comments as saying the military will do the right thing and not support trump’s attempted coup in whatever form it takes. Leaving the various layers of law enforcement to grapple with what to do when two people are insisting they’re both president.
OTOH, I see @Sherred seemingly agreeing w @DWMarch, then going on to say that the military is being purged of anyone who’d do the right thing and therefore the military will totally side with trump’s coup.
So am I confused, or is somebody else?
We’ll have to wait on @DWMarch to answer that. But for several reasons I did take the posts to mean that the military won’t oppose a Trump coup. I could list the texts that led me to believe that, but it’s probably better for DWMarch to answer this.
Thanks to Trump, we’re all confused. It’s one of the primary points of his Playlist.
I’m not confused one bit. The man is a traitor and belong in prison for his many, many crimes.
And yet remains a mentally ill, incompetent, corrupt octogenarian who, by means dodgy, shonky, illegal or unconstitutional, is still capable of winning a plurality of the votes cast. Otherwise known as realpolitik.
And were a plurality of voters, in sufficient states to win the Electoral College, to simply write-in his name on the ballot, would election scrutineers reject unilaterally the plurality of votes when such a situation is expressly and explicitly “the voice of the people” writ large. And in the inevitable legal shit-fight that would follow, you are certain that the law, rather than the law of the jungle, would prevail?
The last vestige of democratic principle in the US is that insufficient people are capable of writing a name on a write-in ballot?
And if wishes were horses then beggars would ride. Nobody’s going to win a presidential election by write-in, and even if Trump could, he’d still be ineligible to take office and his running mate would become president.
None of which helped him stay in office for a minute after 12 PM on 1/20/2021. He didn’t even come CLOSE. I see no reason to believe that at eight years older and much less popular he’ll somehow be BETTER at undermining democracy.
“if wishes were horses then beggars would ride”
Barely any more robust than the mythical/fabled checks and balances that have allowed the mess unfolding before your eyes.
I will just note that we have a constitutional amendment that reads, in part:
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Donald Trump was, as President, an officer of the United States who took an oath to support the Constitution of the United States. He also engaged in insurrection against the same.
If memory serves, at least one state court and one state board of elections even said as much.
And yet today, 5 and a half years later, despite having never had “such disability” removed, he once more holds office under the United States as President of the same. He was even on the ballot in those states!
So I said what I said: Mamdani is no less eligible than Trump to be elected President. Take that as you will.
That’s because they never put in an enforcement mechanism for that language. Which is pretty scary.
I agree with Smapti that Trump won’t be POTUS after January 2029, but I also think that (assuming he’s still alive, sticking with this thread topic) there is a greater than zero chance of him trying to still be POTUS. And that itself is still very, very bad. Potentially a catastrophe, an existential one for the country. So, I take no comfort at all in it.
That’s amendment also says;
The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Meaning it’s up to Congress to legislate the process by which someone is disqualified on the grounds of insurrection. It’s not self-executing just because “everyone knows he did it”.
Words on paper are not self-executing. People who stand up and do something are what executes. No people standing up? No execution.
Oh, very good. What’s the enforcement mechanism for the 22nd amendment?
The 22nd isn’t dependent on an enforcement clause like the 14th is. No state will list a candidate on the ballot if they’re ineligible for the office they want to run for and an electoral vote cast for them would not be valid.