Illinois Elections Board Keeps Trump on the Ballot
The Board said the decision should go through the courts “because of the complicated constitutional issues involved.”
This is YUGE. I figured Illinois would kick him off.
The Illinois Election Board decided it did not have the jurisdiction to remove former President Donald Trump from the ballot.
The Board said the decision should go through the courts “because of the complicated constitutional issues involved.”
However, Clark Erickson, a Republican retired judge, wrote in his opinion “that a ‘preponderance of the evidence’ presented proved that Trump engaged in insurrection and should be barred from the ballot.”
It’s huge because it is a unanimous decision. It has four Republicans and four Democrats.
The Colorado Supreme Court booted Trump off the ballot, but the state will not remove him until the Supreme Court rules on it.
Florida, Minnesota, and Michigan all chose to keep Trump on the ballot.
Maine’s secretary of state determined Trump cannot be on the ballot.
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Insofar as they decided, that the issue is for the “courts,” they are correct. However, those must be federal courts, because section 5 of the the 14th Amendment did not give the States concurrent jurisdiction over matters therein. (As was done, for instance, in the 18th Amendment.) The instant issue is strictly a matter for the federal courts, under the statutes written by Congress pursuant to section 5.
How ‘gracious’ of them. These petitions should be summarily dismissed and the petitioners charged a fee for wasting public resources. Also, the ‘retired Republican judge’ apparently thinks the standard of proof for ‘insurrection’ is ‘preponderance of the evidence.’ Thank God he’s not on the bench anymore as I’m sure anyone who was unfortunate enough to have a case before him can attest.
Why exactly do you disagree with the standard of evidence. It seems absurd to claim a judge knows less than you on the basis of what exactly?
The guy is just making things up. Pretty irresponsible and dangerous given the matter at issue. And, incidentally it should be dismissed as a matter of law.
Of course the standard is preponderance of the evidence. Why would it be anything else?
He’s wrong about the actual proof, and he’s also wrong for several unrelated reasons, but not for that one.
I’m not convinced he is wrong. The evidence that Trump is liable if not guilty of insurrection is pretty strong. That aside what are your other reasons?
No, it isn’t.
1. There was no insurrection. There was a small riot and insignificant that pales in comparison to the hundreds of riots in the previous year, some of which were actual insurrections.
2. Whatever it was, he wasn’t involved in it anyway.
3. The presidency is not one of the offices from which insurrectionists are barred.
4. The presidential oath is not one of those listed that triggers the bar.
5. The amnesty of 1872 removed the disability from “all persons”, with a list of exceptions. Trump is not one of the exceptions, therefore even if he had been a senator, and had then participated in an actual insurrection, and was again running for the senate, he would still be eligible.
6. Who is on a primary ballot is entirely the business of the political party in question.
7. As for the ballot in November, the 14th amendment is not about ballots, because they didn’t exist in 1868, so it can’t mean that certain people should not appear on one. Who should appear is a matter of state law, since it was the states that decided to start printing them. But the intent of the 14th amendment was that the bar would be applied either by the electors themselves, or by Congress when counting the electors’ ballots.
Seven independent reasons should be enough.
1. It was hardly small there were thousands, and it was violent. And importantly involved disrupting the peaceful transfer of power. It was overtly an attempt to keep Trump as president. Unlike the blm riots which had opportunistic elements looting making trouble for little or no purpose. Those are distinctly different things.
2. He was absolutely involved, he stoked the insurrectionists with a narrative that was both false and inflammatory. He also sat on his hands when he should have intervened and no one statement is not enough. He watched the whole thing and his response to Mike pences situation was basically so what. It’s pretty absurd to claim he wasn’t involved when he was the primary cause
3. This claim stems from the odd wording in the clause. Plenty of legal scholars have pointed out that this is an absurdity and indeed Trump has used th4 claim that the Presidency as a defence in other legal contexts therefore its both absurd from a constitutional point of view and he is trying to have his cake and eat it.
4. I don’t really understand what your argument is here, are you claiming that the presidential oath isn’t to protect and defend the constitution? This seems absurd on its face.
5. This is again absurd the amnesty was contemporaneous. The notion that it would some how nullify an actual constitutional clause in perpetuity makes no sense.
6. There is a legitimate question with respect to the primary ballot vs the general ballot. Depending on state so fair enough on this point.
7. Your implying stuff that simply isn’t in the clause. Nor does your point really make any sense a provision barring from a position explicitly relates to a ballot because that leads to absurdities otherwise and the clause specifically includes those running on ballots.
Your distinctly unconvincing
Someone seems to be reading TEA leaves.
Imagine how long it would take to count all those “write in” ballots
Pritzker must be heartsick. Dozens of pizza delivery vehicles are lined up at the statehouse.
Illinois is like Georgia in that there are two Georgia’s. There is metro Atlanta and the Geo0rgia outside the metro area. There is metro Chicago Illinois and the Illinois outside Chicago. The metro areas are uber liberal and outside the metro area the populace tends to be conservative.
To reinforce your point, if not for one county in GA – Fulton county, the same county that has a runaway prosecutor chasing Trump – Trump would have carried the state by more than 100K votes. I suspect if they would have had ‘purple-thumb’ voting in Fulton County, like they do in Iraq and other nascent democracies, Trump probably wins the state by 90K even WITH Fulton County.
Georgia is a red state with a sick blue lesion.
Nce. Imma use that. See also New York, and Washington State.
It cost Illinois nothing to keep Trump on the ballot. The state will go to whoever is on the Democrat ballot in November.
And by the same token, it would have cost Trump nothing if he were not on the ballot. He has no chance of winning Illinois anyway, so it makes no difference to him whether he’s on or off. Being kicked off the ballot would actually give him a campaign point to exploit in states that he can win, so it would probably be a net plus.
(If by some freak event he were to win Illinois, he will have already won by a landslide anyway, and therefore won’t need it. )
I wonder if its possible the election board considered the possibility that the SC could rule that keeping Trump off the November election for bogus reasons would invalidate their election and cause their electoral votes to be void. That would scare the (censored) out of them, to succeed in their initial attempt only to find it boomerangs and elects their arch-enemy.
Nope. There is no way the Court could make such a finding. No matter what happens, Illinois is entitled to its electors.
When they going to kick pedo joe off the ballot for not enforcing immigration laws on the southern and northern borders?
That is not grounds for being excluded from a ballot. Or for being disqualified from office.
Il rep explained:
b/c our vote counters know what to do
it doesnt matta