I think the issue is not that we should be afraid to pursue a just course because of the unethical way the Republicans would inevitably respond for partisan “revenge”. The issue I see @Saint_Cad raising is that if the SC won’t engage with the issue, there is simply no legal recourse against such a Republican response.
I can’t find a thread about Maine. Is that being discussed here?
(Gift link)
Thanks Reimann. That is exactly it. There are two issues here (depending on state) that need to be addressed by SCOTUS as a national issue.
Secretaries of State having unilateral power to declare someone ineligible as was tried on Obama re: being a non-NBC or Trump committing insurrection or Biden for ???
Secretaries of State not having power to exclude someone that is undeniably ineligible such as someone that was born in Austria or has only resided in the US 6 months of their life.
It doesn’t have to hold up in order to be raised, and possibly force one of Trump’s mouthpieces to say in a motion for summary judgment that Trump has not been elected twice. Which might be useful, and would certainly be even more amusing.
Two states halfway down, 48 to go!
Go Maine!
This could be just the break the Phillips campaign has been waiting for!
Maine bars Trump from ballot as US Supreme Court weighs state authority to block former president
Maine’s Democratic secretary of state on Thursday removed former President Donald Trump from the state’s presidential primary ballot under the Constitution’s insurrection clause , becoming the first election official to take action unilaterally as the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to decide whether Trump remains eligible to continue his campaign.
The decision by Secretary of State Shenna Bellows follows a ruling earlier this month by the Colorado Supreme Court that booted Trump from the ballot there under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. That decision has been stayed until the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether Trump is barred by the Civil War-era provision, which prohibits those who “engaged in insurrection” from holding office.
I’ve been thinking the same thing for years.
And now someone has filed a complaint in Wisconsin:
Note that in Wisconsin the Wisconsin Elections Commission, not the Secretary of State is responsible for elections.
Brian
How does the timing work? As I recall, CO said they need to start printing ballots by some date crazy early in January - the 3d or 4th. Here it is December 29 - not a time of year the courts generally operate at warp speed.
What are the legal/economic factors related to the deadline identified by CO? Do they have to hold off until final appeals? Or proceed, and then just revise later?
Yup, that’s the guy: Joseph Wheeler - Wikipedia
As have I. As I’ve said elsewhere on the Dope, I wish someone would box him in on that point in one of his many depositions: “So it is your testimony, Mr. Trump, under oath and subject to the pains and penalties of perjury, that you were elected President in both 2016 and 2020?” The 22nd Amendment discusses how many times you’re elected, not whether or not you actually serve out a term.
I don’t know, but they’re great questions. I believe I read that the timing basically ensures Trump will be on the Colorado primary ballot.
But you’re getting at exactly why this needs to be super-expedited. We’re already past the point where confusion is widespread. Chaos will soon follow. Every level of judicial involvement must recognize the crucial point in our history we now inhabit.
You forgot DC
If he wins but is ineligible, I suspect the Republican Party will choose his replacement in the general.
Yep, makes sense.
Maybe this thread should be re-named again, to be the general thread keeping track of the decisions in each state?
(It started out with the title about conservative law profs raising the issue, then got re-named after the Colorado decision.)
I’m not sure about you, but other posters here have often ridiculed strictly textualist readings of the constitution. I suspect that, if the tables were turned—that is, Biden won two elections, someone usurped the office for the second term, and Biden is now running again—these same posters would be purposivistically arguing that Biden would be electable in the third election, since the intent of the amendment is to prevent someone from serving as president for three terms, not merely being elected to the office.
And googling tells me he, and other confederates, were pardoned.
Donald, not so much.
Wiggle out of that, Supreme Court!
This thread started as a general thread about the argument that Trump is ineligible. Then Colorado ruled he was. The issue came up in Michigan and was discussed here. I mentioned Maine here. Now there is a challenge in Wisconsin.
I don’t think we want a new thread about every state because there will probably be more, and we’d probably need yet another thread to discuss a SCOTUS ruling if it covers all of the country.
Seems better in one thread since it’s all the same issue.
If this is anything more than a joke, the obvious response to a literal reading like this is that it talks about whether you are elected, not whether you believe you are elected. If anything hinged on personal belief, then a 34-year-old who sincerely (but mistakenly) believed that there was an error on their birth certificate would be eligible.
The most you can get out of this is an accusation of hypocrisy, and I don’t think even that holds up. Among all the valid criticisms of Trump, I think this one is weak sauce. It’s really not hypocritical for him to say that he believes he won, but that any 22A determination should hinge on whether others believe he won.