- cross-posted to:
- politics@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- politics@beehaw.org
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.
TL;DR: Yes to the first question, no to the other.
One of the reasons why it’s currently literally impossible for a third party candidate to win the presidency is that, spitting on the very concept of democracy, some states have banned third party candidates from their polls entirely and others set unreasonable criteria that are either much easier for the two main parties to meet since they’re bigger and richer or that the main parties are simply exempt from.