The Colorado Department of State warned that it would be “a matter for the Courts” if the state’s Republican party withdrew from or ignored the results of the primary.
You’re not understanding. They’re complaining about the primary so their solution is essentially to hold their own primary outside of state control, but he wouldn’t be able to run in the general election even if he wins their primary so it doesn’t matter. As things currently stand there’s only two possibilities, Trump loses the primary to someone else in which case things continue as normal, or Trump wins the primary in which case the GOP wouldn’t be able to run a presidential candidate in Colorado. Biden (assuming he’s the DNC candidate for the general election) would run unopposed in Colorado.
Probably not earth shattering since he would likely win there even if Trump could run there, but if Trump isn’t on the ballot a certain percentage of GOP voters won’t bother going to the polls which will hurt the GOP in senate and congress races as well as on state votes.
Oh man your last point is important. I’m so low on confidence in the system that I’m nervous to rely on the government a tuallly excluding him from the ballot, but if he really is banned it’d be so awesome to watch gop officials freaking the fuck out as their turn out numbers drop like a meteor
I haven’t seen a law stating that the secretary can keep a candidate legally nominated by the party off of the ballot. There may be such a law, but I haven’t seen it mentioned. The only law I’ve seen is the one allowing them to design the primary ballot based on their own determination of eligibility. I’d be happy to read anything you have about the same type of law applying to the general.
The ruling is that the sec state cannot allow onto the ballot a candidate who is legally disqualified.
Not quite. The law is that the secretary cannot allow someone onto the primary ballot who is, in their opinion, disqualified. The ruling is that CO has the right to use that law to keep Trump off of the primary ballot.
I don’t know whether that law also applies to the general election ballot, but the fact that the republicans think that they can pull it out of the state’s hands and do a run around with a caucus makes me think it’s about the primaries. I don’t think they can legally switch to a caucus mid race for other reasons, but if they do they think it’s a path.
That’s assuming that such a nomination would be legal. I’m pretty sure most places have laws that say “you must be eligible for the office in order to stand as a candidate for it.” Colorado Republicans could nominate Justin Bieber, but that wouldn’t make him eligible to be President.
The argument would be that he’s ineligible due to the 14th amendment and therefore they’re just enforcing the constitution which would supercede state law anyway. That would of course be a very interesting legal question as the crux of it is is a state allowed to enforce a provision of the constitution that the federal government isn’t (which is itself a state of affairs that raises all kinds of questions).
Yes exactly. That’s the argument that has already been discarded in this case. Were Trump to be found guilty of insurrection, he would be legally ineligible under the constitution. What team Trump is hoping to do is to win on the insurrection case or to delay trial until after he wins the presidency, after which he has any number of ways to escape prosecution.
However, if he is found guilty before the general ballots are set (or after, I suppose - I really don’t know that part) he would be ineligible but that would be based on a federal court ruling and not on the judgement of the secretary, I believe.
