I have it on good authority Trump won California during the last election. That good authority being Trump himself of course.
See
In summary, each state’s House delegation votes amongst themselves to determine who that state’s one vote will be cast for. Presumably along straight party lines. If a state delegation ends up in a tie that state gets no vote at all for president.
With the interesting side effect that if the minority party holds a majority in the majority of states, the minority party’s favorite will win the overall election. Which of course in the modern era is yet another way the Rs have a built-in advantage.
He won every fucking where! But it was rigged and STOLLEN!
Pointless with regard to California, but it’s an indication that there may not be a national groundswell to remove him from ballots. Unfortunately.
California has 169 GOP delegates, more than any other state. If Trump had been removed from the California primary ballot, Trump losing the nomination would have started looking like a real possibility.
Apologies — my last post misidentifies the quoted poster.
This is the second time I’ve fixed a misattributed quote by you. I’m not sure how it happens, but can you please flag it if you do it again? Thanks.
To supplement @psychonaut ‘s explanation, here’s the wiki article on purposive interpretation.
It’s the leading principle in Canada for interpreting the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Oh, I agree with you.
I’m just trying to predict how the right side of the court will rule. I’m jaded enough to believe that they will begin with their preferred result (of course trump is eligible to be president), and then try to contort the law to reach that aim.
How so? I predict that they will impose some additional requirements before a person is deemed to have engaged in insurrection, under the guise of due process. I mean, it seems a bridge too far for them to otherwise conclude that a) the 14th amendment can be ignored or b) that the amendment didn’t apply to the office of the presidency.
Is it legislating from the bench? Absolutely. Is it contrary to “conservative” judicial philosophy? Also true. But it’s what I think they’ll end up doing.
Sadly, I agree with you.
I don’t see why they won’t go for option (b) above. They already have a strong preference towards granting massive leeway towards the executive. I could absolutely see them saying that actions taken while President cannot, by definition, be insurrections. How can you rebel against the current government when you are the current government?
I think it’s a BS argument, but at least one appellate court in CO agreed with that argument (or a similar one), so it’s not too far a stretch for SCOTUS to do the same, IMO.
I’m not sure the right side of the court wants Trump as President. At least, not if maneuvering court decisions could result in precedents that could be used against them, or what they want.
If they raise the bar for the 14th to apply, they will have to justify where they put it. If they put it at a criminal conviction, they are, in effect, allowing politicians to engage in insurrection against their own government.
I say that because our legal system is designed to allow many guilty offenders to go free to prevent incarceration of innocent people. This is well-known and, in normal times, creates much discontent for those on the right. They see people who break the law go free on a technicality, and it makes them mad.
It is also well known that the wealthy and influential have a much better chance at avoiding criminal conviction, though. As most politicians would fit the wealthy and influential label, this would make for an unstable structure. It would encourage politicians to use insurrection, i.e., violence, as a political tactic. Insurrection would be strategically acceptable as long as the leader did not get convicted.
I truly like to hope that those in charge do not want to be responsible for an unstable government.
The easiest thing for the SC to do would be to simply rule on whether or not the Colorado SoS has the authority to keep Trump off the ballot due to the 14th Amendment. Existing precedents say the states do have the authority to control the ballots, so it would have to be a decision crafted specifically at the 14th Amendment.
I don’t know if they will try that. They could just kick the can and say that if the Colorado SoS wants to keep Trump off the Primary Ballot, they crossed all the t’s and dotted all the i’s necessary to do it (or perhaps not if there is a couple of j’s they missed). They may decide that Write-In votes for Trump must be counted, resulting in a partial ruling. If I had quatloos to bet, that’s where they’d go.
There really is no question that Trump engaged in insurrection. While I doubt the US SC will state that as clearly as the Colorado SC did, I really don’t see the SC trying to rule otherwise.
That’s certainly the low-barrier approach for SCOTUS. Don’t actually affirm that CO’s SC got the insurrection call correct, merely say that SCOTUS confirms it’s CO’s call to make as to their primary ballots. And thereby confirm it’s also all the other states’ right to do so per their own state laws.
Depending on the details of the 50 states’ plus few territories’ laws, that right may or may not extend to the general election ballot.
But …
Given the extreme partisan corruption in some states, that will almost certainly create some state that tries to purge Biden from their general election ballot on (dare I say it?) trumped up charges. This would happen sooner if Biden wasn’t seeking reelection, but since the Ds won’t be having a 2024 primary election, there’s no D primary ballot for the corrupt folks to screw with.
Once some corrupt state purges Biden from the general election ballot the court case fighting the purge will quickly find its way to SCOTUS’ door. Where they will have to grasp the nettle that there are upper limits to the (un)reasonableness of the states’ rights to discretion. Which limits they will have to both divine in a hurry and invite the Federal government to enforce.
If we thought sending federal troops in to monitor school desegregation and elections in the 1960s was a shitshow, this will be a lot more exciting.
Can you imagine Federal troops manning every polling place in Texas, first delivering all the Federally-approved ballots, then taking them all away for counting? Over the several weeks of early voting then finally on Election Day? QAnon would be having the first continuous 2-month long orgasm in human history.
The “but” here is that there is no mechanism to keep Biden off the General Election Ballots, since neither Biden or Trump will be on those ballots. Only the electors for Biden or Trump (god forbid) will be on those ballots and, assuming that the Major Parties do their due diligence, those electors will not have been involved in any insurrection.
That’s the point I have been trying to make between the difference between the Primary ballot and the General ballot. The 14th Amendment specifically applies to electors, not the candidate. That is not in question.
The whole method used to determine the President needs to be overhauled, since the way we vote has changed so much since they were developed. With letting women, regular people, and even minorities vote, and electronic communication, a lot of the safeguards built into the system are not only ineffective, but detrimental to a fair and honest result. Unfortunately, there are too many on both sides that think they can game the current system to their benefit, so I don’t see any change coming quickly.
So in another thread I mentioned this possibility:
The 14th amendment, section 5, states
I wonder if the court will say that only Congress has the power to disqualify a candidate due to insurrection referenced in Article 3 of the amendment. That would invalidate the decision in Colorado (and elsewhere)
No, IMHO (IANAL) the easiest thing would be to say trump isnt convicted (yet) and thus until he is, this is a no-go.
I couldnt even say that would be wrong.
When I vote, I vote for the candidate, not a slate of electors. Sure, I know that that is what I am really voting for, but the candidates name appears. And they have to vote for that named candidate.
I could. What precedence there is says that the person excluded does not have to be convicted of anything.
I think that that clause means that Congress could pass a law saying that it requires a criminal conviction, or Congress could pass a law saying that it requires only a civil trial with its lower burden of proof, or Congress could pass a law setting some other standard entirely, and if Congress passed any such law, then that law would govern… but so far as I know, Congress has never passed any such law, and there’s no guidance as to what the standard should be in the absence of such a law.
On the contrary, they’ve done the opposite. They’ve reined in Trump’s attempts to have unlimited power multiple times. This seems like a bizarre take.
Yes, even those he nominated. They don’t owe him anything and made it clear.
I have to reluctantly admit that this seems like a very strong argument to me.
There is no precedence- at all, for any of this-, except that in the USA, you are innocent until proven guilty. Which I am sure he is.