floofloofSupreme Court restores Trump to ballot, rejecting state attempts to ban him over Capitol attack
Naturally
BombOmOmCorrect. States simply don’t have this power. The decision was unanimous for a reason.
States rights*
*terms and conditions apply
*terms and conditions apply
Always has been. States have never had free reign to do anything they want. This is one of the things they cannot do.
snooggumsStates already do things like bar felons from voting and only put on 3rd party candidates that meet a certain signature threshold. Or add barriers to voting, like restricting when you can vote and ID laws.
Pretty much how it goes. Laws affect peons: oh well. Laws affect wealthy politicians: off to SCOTUS for them to overturn it!
They are excplicitly given this power in the constitution, what are you talking about?
NateNate60What is the text of the last section of Amendment 14?
Why?
There is no “why”. I asked a question.
For no reason? Helpful of you.
My bad. I overestimated the ability of people on this website to infer subtext.
The last section of Amendment 14 explains why the Supreme Court was more or less correct in its interpretation before you edited your original comment.
Fwiw i got it
So all I had to do was add the literal quotes from the constitution to render the supreme court obviously incorrect. Nice.
That is why I added those words.
No.
The Supreme Court ruled that the provisions you cited are not “self executing”. It needs to be enforced by an Act of Congress. You assumed that because it says that, therefore it works on its own without the need for anything else. That’s not how the law works in the US.
The text of Amendment 14 §5 which are you so reluctant to post:
The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Now tell me, is it not a reasonable interpretation of this clause that the terms of Amendment 14 may only be enforced by Congress and not anyone else.
Don’t cite Amendment 10 here. It doesn’t apply. This power is explicitly delegated to Congress.
So your contention is that the meanings of the phrase “congress shall have power to enforce” are:
this constitutional amendment “may only be enforced by congress and not by anyone else” even though this is not stated in the Constitution.
“needs to be enforced by congress”, even though this is not stated in the Constitution.
“this power is explicitly delegated to Congress”, even though this is an implicit permission rather than an explicit designation?
You’ll want to reference what is written and is not, in the Constitution, rather than your imagining of my assumptions.
I don’t like the guy, but I like even less the government deciding to take candidates off the ballot.
The opinion: www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/…/23-719_19m2.pdf
We conclude that States may disqualify persons holding or attempting to hold state office. But States have no power under the Constitution to enforce Section 3 with respect to federal offices, especially the Presidency.
GhostalmediaTo be fair, the government has always set criteria for being on the ballot. For example, to be US president you have to be at least 35, a natural citizen, and have live in the states for at least 14 years.
Not being an insurrectionist is also part of that criteria. Were just never had a presidential candidate that has needed us to consider that part of the constitution.
Think of it this way. It’s not that the government is trying take an eligible person off the ballot, but it’s clarifying the ineligibility criterion.
If the person committed a crime that exempts them from the ballot- I absolutely want them removed.
If conservatives want to try and prove innocent men and women need to be removed- I want them to try it in court.
Denting the ability to follow the law outright out of fear of what the other side will do is essentially negotiating with terrorists.
MelllvarTime to violently storm the Supreme Court, then. After all, they approve.
Sorry, but this is absolutely a victory for democracy and what little structure our government still has. If the states were to be allowed to remove candidates from the ballot, you could kiss any chance of Democrat candidates showing up on red state ballots goodbye.
Except for the part where they punt to Congress as the sole arbiter of whether Trump engaged in insurrection. They absolutely know Congress won’t get off its collective ass to enforce, because it’s too broken to even pass a budget.
PriorityMotifI believe that someone could sue in federal court, but the 14th amendment doesn’t state that he can’t run for office. It merely states that he can’t hold office. Of course if he wins the election then that will be a giant cluster fuck.
They can’t really sue to disqualify him in federal court because Congress hasn’t defined any process to do so. They absolutely could if they wanted though. As of right now if I’m correct the only way to disqualify someone is if they’re convicted of rebellion or insurrection under 18 U.S.C. § 2383 as it specifically lists it as part of the punishment. Or Congress could potentially disqualify someone directly by name – it wouldn’t necessarily be an illegal bill of attainder because it carries no criminal penalty.
If a person cannot hold an office, they are typically also disqualified from running for said office, for exactly that reason. What would you do if an ineligible person won the election? That would be utter chaos.
Someone explained to me there is a procedure for an elected candidate who is ineligible actually wins the election.
If for any reason the president cannot carry out the duties of the office, it falls to the vice president. So you’d have to just skip the president and swear in his running mate.
It would still be utterly stupid, but surprisingly there is a process to handle the scenario.
More than anyone can imagine
That’s a problem with Congress. That doesn’t change the fact that we should not give Republicans a new route to undermine the voting process.
States have always had control over federal elections and candidate qualifications. That’s been fundamental to American federalism since the very beginning.
It’s not like oath-breaking is the only disqualifier, and states decide those too.
Call me old fashioned, but an outgoing president who falsely claims their challenger stole the election and incites their supporters to storm the capitol building should be barred from holding office again, Democrat or Republican.
I absolutely agree. But it’s up to Congress to actually do that. That’s the branch of government that has failed here.
How would they do that? Congress can’t actually charge someone with a crime. That’s why they wrote the 14th Amendment which spelled this out.
States remove candidates routinely. It’s their constitutional right. Except with Trump for some reason.
For some Reason indeed.
Yup. He’s getting special treatment. Again.
Do you have any examples of that? I’m certainly no expert in this subject, so I’d love to know more.
Abdul Hassan, 2012, Colorado. Disqualified by the state for not being a natural born citizen. Sued and lost. The ensuing opinion authored by then district judge Neil Gorsuch upheld the constitutional right and duty of states to bar ineligible candidates.
KoboldCoterieThis is a shit take. This ruling is not saying “Trump did nothing wrong”, this is specifically saying “States cannot unilaterally decide to remove federal election candidates from ballots”, which I completely agree with. As others have noted, it would open the doors to so much bullshit if this were allowed.
The SC could come out tomorrow and say “We’re disqualifying Trump”, this doesn’t preclude that.
States have always had that power. Whether its age, naturalization, or oath-breaking, it’s never been up to the federal government to decide disqualification.
Now they do not, as outlined by the supreme court this morning. You can disagree with the ruling all you want, but that doesn’t make the premise that “the SC has no problem with insurrectionist behavior!” any less stupid. It’s a fallacious premise.
Consider the fact that there is more than one grounds for disqualification. For president, there are also age and naturalization disqualifications.
Who do you think has been determining those all these years?
You’re getting further and further away from your original, still ridiculous statement that the SCOTUS has no problem with you storming the building.
That is what is known as “sarcasm”. I wasn’t sincerely calling for violence against the Supreme Court, but rather drawing attention to their hypocrisy.
it’s never been up to the federal government to decide disqualification.
It’s up to Congress to decide if someone is guilty of federal insurrection, not the states.
On the contrary, Congress is expressly forbidden from deciding whether someone is guilty of a crime.
IMPEACHMENT has entered the chat.
Impeachment is expressly not a criminal procedure. It can’t result in prison or fines, nor can it can’t be pardoned by the President.
But it is the process by which a candidate can be removed from the ballot.
Being convicted of a crime doesn’t disqualify anyone; people have run for President from prison. And most of the people who attacked Congress on Jan. 6 would not be disqualified for it even if they are convicted of a crime for it.
Disqualification is not a criminal punishment. It’s not a crime to be 34 years old, for example, or to have been born in another country. But those are still disqualifications, and they are and always have been enforced by the states.
The specific crimes I was thinking of were: impeachment for high crimes and misdemeanors or criminal conviction for treason.
“High crimes and misdemeanors” is a term of art that refers to acts committed by a public official which, while not necessarily a crime in themselves, are a violation of public trust.
For example, a president that accepted a foreign title of nobility without Congressional consent would have committed a high crime, but they couldn’t be hauled into a criminal court for it.
Right.
Congress would control that, just like determining an insurrection was committed.
They didn’t do that.
The media did.
The only thing Congress can do is remove Trump’s disqualification under the 14th amendment. They can’t decide whether he’s disqualified in the first place.
The could have impeached him (again). And if the Senate convicted, he would have been ineligible to run again.
The 14th amendment doesn’t require impeachment or criminal conviction, though. It’s a completely different disqualification provision from impeachment.
For example, members of Congress cannot be impeached, but they can be disqualified under the 14th amendment. It makes no sense to roll impeachment and the 14th amendment into the same category of disqualification.
One judge “finds” he did it. What a lovely country we would have if that’s all it took. No defense, no evidence needed. Just a judges opinion.
Short slope to a work camp. Maybe we could sort of concentrate all the people we disagree with in one.
All fair points that still ignore the guy who tried to overthrow the country where absolutely nothing was done about him, to hold him accountable.
If the feds are saying only they can protect the country from all enemies orange and domestic, there’s about 80 million active voters who might, uh, decidedly disagree. As opposed to some other adverb.
If O’l Joe has 80 million voters, why are you worried about Trump being on the ballot? He can’t possibly win.