You’ve likely heard that you might not see Trump’s name on the voting ballot soon. An Illinois judge has called to remove former president Donald Trump from the state’s ballot based on the 14th Amendment’s “Insurrectionist Ban”. But is this really going to happen? And should it?
This ban says that anyone who took an oath to uphold the Constitution, like the president, but then supported or enacted an insurrection or rebellion would no longer be able to hold future public office. Due to Trump’s likely involvement and support of the January 6th attack on the Capitol, this ban is being used to claim he should be disqualified from running for presidency again.
However … It’s looking unlikely that anything will come of this.
It’s been a bit of a hot potato on who can decide. Last month, this issue was brought to the Illinois State Board of Elections, but they voted against it, ultimately deciding that it was not their place to decide on if Trump should be on the ballot or not. They allowed for state courts to appeal, saying they should decide, which we are now seeing.
But, that’s not the case for other states going through similar cases, like Colorado. Colorado decided that their state courts don’t have the right to decide to remove Trump from the ballot either. So, it’s gone a third level to Congress and the Supreme Court.
However, just recently, Congress shot down the ban for Colorado, and decided Trump should remain on the ballots.
“We conclude that states may disqualify persons holding or attempting to hold state office,” the court’s opinion says. “But states have no power under the Constitution to enforce Sections 3 with respect to federal offices, especially the presidency.” Essentially, states don’t have the right to have a say of who can be voted for as president.
Some people, such as Trump’s attorney Nicholas Nelson, have claimed that the January 6th attack was a “political riot,” not a planned insurrection, so the ban should not apply. Ultimately, the ban is vague in its wording, and it hasn’t been used in more than a century. This is a lot of the basis for the Supreme Court’s decision: the ban is too unclear to be used properly.
There’s also fear that allowing individual states to have him on the ballot, while other states don’t, will be a disastrous “chaotic state-by-state patchwork, at odds with our Nation’s federalism principles,” wrote Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
This guest post is in partnership with True Star Media.