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zataomm  4mo ago (text post)   5370 thread views

Colorado Supreme Court Thread

Link to the decision

I don't know to what extent there are established precedents for when a topic is worthy of a mega-thread, but this decision seems like a big deal to me with a lot to discuss, so I'm putting this thread here as a place for discussion. If nobody agrees then I guess they just won't comment.

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American insider baseball? I lack the context to make sense of this.

Edit: Thanks for the explanations, makes sense now.

I listen to news commentary talk radio every day. This story has dominated coverage. Also front page articles in American newspapers. It's the big deal this week.

After the American Civil War they passed a Constitutional ammendment banning former-Confederates who also were former civil officers or military officers. These people swore oaths to defend the Constitution and the Republic and then betrayed those oaths.

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.

Colorado state court says Trump is ineligible based on this. He's an insurrectionist. And that ammendment mentions nothing about needing a conviction. So they've ordered him removed from the state primary ballots, which will be printed in a few days. The Supreme Court needs to rush to block this or Trump's won't be on the primary ballot. And given this logic to keep him off the primary, surely they'd have to keep him off of the general election ballot. Which is actually a callback to states pre-Civil War not putting Lincoln on the ballot. Just don't even pretend anyone is allowed to vote for your opponents.

Plaintiffs in at least seven states have tried to get state courts to remove Trump from the ballot using this reasoning. They finally found a venue willing to do it. Just barely, the judges that ruled on this are all Democratic appointees and even they only barely majority support this. So it is not that popular yet, unless the people pushing for it can convice more states.

I would say removing a candidate from the ballot like this is not inside baseball and is actually a rather big deal. We already have Republicans threatening to remove Biden from ballots in retaliation. Could be idle threats. Could be a bad path for our nation to go down. Also going to wound the Supreme Court's credibility among half the nation when they rule on this. This is corrosive.

Colorado state court says Trump is ineligible based on this. He's an insurrectionist. And that ammendment mentions nothing about needing a conviction.

There are a number of issues there, most notably that Trump (uniquely among Presidents for decades if not centuries) has never been a member of Congress, an officer of the US, a member of any state legislature, or an executive or judicial officer of any state.

Agreed. The 14th Ammendment is way too verbose and overspecifies who counts. By my reading Trump doesn't.

I suppose circa the late 1860s it was perfectly obvious who was a former insurrectionist and former officer, representative or appointee. So slightly overly specific language wasn't a problem.

I also suppose insurrection was so clear to them in its magnitude and unambiguous nature that Trump didn't do anything that counts. He didn't wage literal war against America. His tweeting to stay peaceful and go home don't count.

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