(DailyVantage.com) – The Supreme Court recently issued a unanimous decision that halted multiple states’ attempts at removing former President Donald Trump from the presidential ballot, prompting Democratic lawmakers like Representative Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) to pursue legislation preventing specific candidates from running for office. Raskin said he’d renew efforts to prevent people like Trump, those accused of insurrection, from being eligible to run for office. Despite Raskin’s promises, the Supreme Court ruling allows Trump to run in every state across the country, setting Trump up as the likely Republican candidate for the 2024 presidential election.
Maine, Colorado, and Illinois are among the states that attempted to limit Trump’s ability to run for president. Each state cited the 14th Amendment’s insurrection provision, which provides that anyone guilty of insurrection cannot hold public office. Congress passed the 14th Amendment in 1868 to prevent lawmakers from the Confederacy from holding public office after the Civil War. Despite the amendment’s lengthy history, Trump’s ballot issue is the first time the Supreme Court considered a 14th Amendment case.
The Supreme Court stated that despite the 14th Amendment’s wording, states like Maine couldn’t prevent candidates like former President Donald Trump from running for office. A vital issue for many lawmakers arising from this legal issue is the fact that technically, a jury hasn’t convicted Trump of insurrection, so barring him from public office would violate his right to due process. The legal decision did leave the federal legislature the opportunity to enact legislation that could bar specific candidates like Trump from office.
Representatives Jamie Raskin and Eric Swalwell (D-California) promised to sponsor a bill that would remove Trump from the presidential ballot, citing the Supreme Court’s decision as an inadequate use of the judicial process. According to Raskin, the 14th Amendment’s provisions make it clear that Trump cannot run for office. During his statements, Raskin referred to the infamous January 6th capitol riots, where protestors entered the national legislature to contest the 2020 presidential election results. Despite Trump’s alleged involvement in the protests, the former president hasn’t been charged or convicted of insurrection, making a ballot removal under the 14th Amendment incredibly unlikely.
Raskin claims the House of Representatives already determined Trump’s guilt of insurrection despite the Senate’s failure to convict the former president. Lawmakers like Raskin believe that the House of Representatives’ determination immediately makes Trump guilty of insurrection. Still, the Supreme Court would likely require a formal legal conviction before it’d enforce a presidential candidate’s removal from the ballot.
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