A judge has rejected three more attempts by former President Donald Trump and the Colorado GOP to shut down a lawsuit seeking to block him from the 2024 presidential ballot in the state based on the 14th Amendment’s “insurrectionist ban.”

The flurry of rulings late Friday from Colorado District Judge Sarah Wallace are a blow to Trump, who faces candidacy challenges in multiple states stemming from his role in the January 6, 2021, insurrection. He still has a pending motion to throw out the Colorado lawsuit, but the case now appears on track for an unprecedented trail this month.

A post-Civil War provision of the 14th Amendment says US officials who take an oath to uphold the Constitution are disqualified from future office if they “engaged in insurrection” or have “given aid or comfort” to insurrectionists. But the Constitution does not spell out how to enforce the ban, and it has been applied only twice since the 1800s.

  • @jordanlundM
    link
    491 year ago

    FTA:

    "Wallace also swatted away arguments from the Colorado GOP that state law gives the party, not election officials, ultimate say on which candidates appear on the ballot.

    “If the Party, without any oversight, can choose its preferred candidate, then it could theoretically nominate anyone regardless of their age, citizenship, residency,” she wrote. “Such an interpretation is absurd; the Constitution and its requirements for eligibility are not suggestions, left to the political parties to determine at their sole discretion.”

    Such obvious bullshit, and I’ll give you an example from my own home state:

    In the 2022 election, our previous governor was term limited and couldn’t run again.

    The secretary of state found that the leading candidate did not meet Oregon residency requirements and banned him from the ballot.

    Stuff like this is the JOB of the secretary of state. It’s literally what they do.

    https://www.registerguard.com/story/news/politics/state/2022/01/06/secretary-state-rules-kristof-ineligible-run-oregon-governor/9119121002/

    "The Oregon Constitution requires a candidate for governor to have been a “resident within this state” for three years prior to the general election.

    Evidence reviewed by elections officials showed Kristof was instead a resident of New York until late 2020 or early 2021, having lived in New York for 20 years, maintained a New York driver’s license, received mail at his New York address, filed income taxes in New York and, as recently as November 2020, voted in New York."