The most explosive news we’ve heard from Maine since 1898.
I hope SCOTUS takes this as an opportunity to set some standard of evidence of ineligibility. People who think it’s ok for a Secretary of State to declare Trump ineligible for being an insurrectionist need to also remember all of the Secretaries of State that wanted Obama of the ballot for being a non-NBC for not releasing the long form of his birth certificate. And now with Texas wanting to declare Biden ineligible for the migrant problem, stealing speeches from Neil Kinnock or having a wife with a doctorate calling herself doctor or whatever reason they put forward, there needs to be a set standard. And as we are seeing it needs to be a set standard for every state. Maybe this is a simplistic solution, but could we have the FEC collect complaints that someone is not eligible and make a ruling applicable to all states?
The FEC is completely ineffectual. It has 2 Dems and 2 GOPs. Nothing of any significance gets done.
I don’t see how they can possibly avoid it. It’s a Federal law. Trump is either eligible or he’s not, for every state.
Of course that was a hoax that started a war.
Maybe not the most propitious of historical precedents to cite.
You and several other folks seem to be pushing the idea the Supremes can just decide to rule on any question or issue they want if somehow that will make the USA a better place. That’s not how it works.
We’ve already seen 4 years of what happens when the executive decides to color way outside its lines. And with the Speaker ructions in the House we’ve seen what happens when Congress abandons all sense of doing its job within normal boundaries to just run off on braying televised flights of lunacy.
And now you want SCOTUS to join the chorus of voices that say rules and precedent don’t matter so we’ll just start bloviating however and whenever we want about whatever we want, laws be damned? That seems … unwise.
The Supremes can take a case when there is a case to take. One that has already been heard in Federal court, and appealed, and appealed again to them. Getting the first case even heard requires things like standing, actual injury, colorable claim, etc.
The fact our current state of game play would be improved by clear settled law and clear settled facts ref the 14th Amendment and trump is nice and all, but is NOT sufficient justification for SCOTUS to do anything. Yet.
They can avoid it by just deciding they’re going to avoid it. Yes, that would lead to chaos. But remember, we’re talking about the party of “but what if we didn’t?”.
Sorry, I was wrong. It’s 6 members, not 4, and must come from different parties.
Current membership, according to Ballotopedia:
The FEC’s leadership as of November 3, 2021:
- Shana Broussard (D) (Chair)
- Allen Dickerson (R) (Vice Chair)
- Ellen L. Weintraub (D)
- James “Trey” Trainor (R)
- Steven T. Walther (I)
- Sean Cooksey (R)[7]
Four votes are required to carry a motion. Historically, that has been difficult to attain on matters that have partisan implications.
Yes, and every thrust of originalist or textualist thinking argues for applying the 14th amendment here.
I bet that Thomas is going to stake out the position that this only applied to former Confederates. And does anybody know if former Confederate officers appeared in the Spanish American war without having been “pardoned” by congress? He’ll look for any basis to wiggle out of the obvious application.
I expect that the rest of the “conservative” (actually, Republican) wing will find some ground on the idea that some qualifications for president, like age, are objective measures, and can be determined as issues of fact in a trial court.
But that “led insurrection” is much more ambiguous, and subject to debate, so they’ll invent some new standard before a person is found to have so committed. (Maybe a finding by the full congress, or they will demand some formal terms of surrender akin to Lee and Grant at Appomattox).
The “liberal/democratic” wing will probably just say, “yeah, of course he did this, and of course the states can exclude him.”
But I don’t think even they will demand a national uniform decision. I expect that individual states will still get to make the decision for themselves.
Of course. But the Trump squad was poised to appeal Colorado’s ruling. This needs to fly through appeals like shit through a goose, and a judiciary that says, “That’s not how we do things” is peopled by shortsighted cowards. This just can’t go on too long.
According to Michigan state law, the SOS
shall issue a list of the individuals generally advocated by the national news media to be potential presidential candidates for each party’s nomination by the political parties for which a presidential primary election will be held
So if Obama is ‘generally advocated by the national news media’ to be a presidential candidate, then she must let him on the ballot. That’s a rather broad definition, but I don’t think anybody in the national news media will advocate anytime soon that Obama is a presidential candidate. YMMV, of course.
This is the part that confounds me, and not just in a “this doesn’t feel right” way. It’s a Federal law, and a candidate is eligible or he is not for this most important Federal office.
I agree with the rest of your post. They may torture logic and history to conjure up an objective measure that effectively leads to Trump’s eligibility—say, a 2/3 vote to establish insurrection in both chambers. But it will settle the matter one way or another.
Mind you, I’m not suggesting they can’t find some way to punt. But that would be such cowardice at a point where our democracy is at stake and a stand must be made, I don’t see how they can avoid stepping up.
Wasn’t there one former Confederate officer in the S-A War who got carried away in the excitement of the moment and yelled « Good work, boys, we’ve got the Yankees on the run! » ?
Paging @Elendil_s_Heir , Civil War guy.
Exactly. How is it he committed insurrection according to some states, didn’t commit insurrection in according to other states and did but the SoS is incapable of keeping him off the ballot in others. This is totally a Federal issue. States may have almost unlimited power in appointing electors but I don’t think that extends to the electors can vote for ineligible candidates.
[Googles] Well done.
Fighting Joe Wheeler. He was also elected to Congress after the Civil War. Roosevelt was under his command.
It would be bold of him to assert that insurrectionists could only ever come from one place.
Along those lines, if the Supreme Court decides to rules-lawyer it this much, can it be argued that it still applies because Trump is just a modern-day Confederate? I am not going to Google it but I am sure there are plenty of pictures of him standing in front of that flag they love so much.
One of the petitioners in Maine had a unique argument; Trump says he won the 2020 election, therefore he’s ineligible for the ballot due to term limits.
I wouldn’t expect that line of reasoning to hold up in court, but it’s amusing all the same.
That would seem to imply that both Trump AND Biden should be off the ticket. Trump because of his two terms, and Biden because he’s an insurrectionist who usurped Trump’s second term.
Does actual guilt or innocence factor into your argument at all, or is it totally a “tit for tat” situation to you?
What’s that supposed to mean? My whole argument is there is no standard for ineligibility and there should be. What tit for tat are you even talking about?