Will States Remove Donald Trump from the ballot?: After an article earlier this month by a pair of law professors argued that, due to his participation in an insurrection, Donald Trump is ineligible to be president, some lawmakers have kicked off the process of trying actually to remove him from the ballot in some states.
But whether that will succeed is another matter.
Donald Trump, Off the Ballot In Some States?
Earlier this month, a pair of law professors with solid conservative credentials authored a paper arguing that, due to his participation in an insurrection, Donald Trump should not be eligible for the presidency.
William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen made that argument in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, in a paper called “The Sweep and Force of Section Three.”
“Trump’s deliberate inaction renders his January 6 speech much more incriminating in hindsight, because it makes it even less plausible (if it was ever plausible) that the crowd’s reaction was all a big mistake or misunderstanding,” Baude and Paulsen write, arguing that Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment, passed after the Civil War, should apply to January 6 and disqualify Trump from the ballot.
How Could States Do This?
“State bodies or officers are obliged, often by oath—sometimes by oath mandated by the U.S. Constitution— to act consistently with the requirements of the Constitution in the discharge of their duties,” the law professors say. “Accordingly, such state actors can and must apply Section Three’s disqualification in carrying out their state-law responsibilities—just as they possess the authority and duty to comply with and enforce the Constitution’s other qualification-for-office requirements.”
The paper by the professors has been cited widely in the press. And while a viral story last week claimed, falsely, that California Gov. Gavin Newsom had started a push to disqualify Trump from that state’s ballot, some figures in other states are talking about doing so. (Newsom did sign a bill in 2019 requiring candidates to release their tax returns — which Trump, at that point, had not done — in order to be eligible for the California ballot; a court later blocked that law from going into effect, and Trump appeared on the state’s ballot in 2020.)
According to The Hill, a pair of organizations, Mi Familia Vota and Free Speech for People, are planning rallies and banner drops in several states, including California, Oregon, Colorado, and Georgia, to encourage those states’ secretaries of state to disqualify Trump from the ballots. Those efforts are aimed to coincide with the 155th anniversary of the passage of the 14th Amendment.
Meanwhile, a battle is on in the New Hampshire Republican Party over whether that early primary state should kick Trump off the ballot. Bryant “Corky” Messner, who ran for the Senate in 2020 in that state and actually was endorsed by Trump, is “questioning’ whether Trump should be eligible for the ballot in that early primary state.
“I’m a Constitutional conservative. The words say what they say,” Messner told Politico. “I quite frankly believe it is in Donald Trump’s best interest to get this looked at as quickly as possible.”
However, Chris Ager, the chair of the state Republican Party, is opposed to that effort, which Politico describes as a “long shot.”
“I am very confident that all of the known presidential candidates who are campaigning in New Hampshire, when they apply, they will be put on the primary ballot,” the chairman told Politico. “Corky’s a friend of mine and I respect him. I just totally disagree with him on this issue. And the Republican Party will fight to make sure that candidates are not denied access to the ballot.”
NBC News reported that the New Hampshire secretary of state’s office has been “flooded” with calls from Trump supporters “ seeking reassurance” that the former president will be on the ballot. They appear to have been driven by conservative personality Charlie Kirk, who told his audience that the state was trying to disqualify Trump.
New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan told NBC News that he is “not seeking to remove any names from the presidential primary ballot, and I have not said that I am seeking to remove any names from the presidential primary ballot.”
Author Expertise and Experience
Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Stephen has authored thousands of articles over the years that focus on politics, technology, and the economy for over a decade. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
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