Michigan Supreme Court Won't Remove Trump From Ballot Or Even Require Damage Deposit
Well now we like Colorado better, so there.
In another case challenging Donald Trump’s ballot eligibility on 14th Amendment grounds, the Michigan state supreme court ruled today that Donald Trump can stay on the state’s primary election ballot, even though everybody knows he’s insurrectiony as fuck. The decision came just a week after Colorado’s high court yeeted Trump from the primary, citing the 14th Amendment, section 3, which prohibits anyone who’s taken an oath to uphold the Constitution from holding any office if they engage in “insurrection or rebellion” against the USA.
The Michigan supreme court’s brief opinion said that under Michigan law, Michigan’s secretary of state lacks the authority to remove a candidate from the ballot before the election and that it would be up to the US Supreme Court to determine whether a candidate were ineligible to take office if or when the candidate were elected. The state Supremes upheld an earlier decision by the state court of appeals on the same grounds.
The decision also noted that since candidate selection is up to political parties, with the state just providing the election mechanisms for that choice, then
political parties might have a constitutional obligation to ensure that proposed presidential primary candidates are constitutionally eligible to hold the office of President before submitting their names to the Secretary of State for inclusion on the primary ballot.
But again, not the State’s business, and also the Colorado decision doesn’t enter into it because Colorado has different election laws, sorry.
NBC News notes that’s more or less what the Minnesota state supreme court found last month in its decision to let Trump remain on the ballot, determining that “Minnesota law did not bar major parties from putting even ineligible candidates on the primary ballot.”
Unlike the Colorado case, the Michigan voters’ lawsuit to bar Trump from being on the ballot was dismissed before it ever got to trial; the state supreme court’s decision relied only on the procedural question of whether the secretary of state could remove Trump from the ballot, and never touched on the question of whether Trump was actually ineligible.
Donald Trump took to his fake Xwitter, Xruth Xocial, to proclaim that the Michigan court had gotten it right by rejecting a “pathetic gambit” to keep him off the ballot, not that he would trust the state supreme court justices on anything else because Gretchen Whitmer is a tyrant and all that.
Trump also claimed the Colorado decision is “being ridiculed and mocked all over the World,” because you know everyone thinks Trump is best, and America must be rescued from “Crooked Joe Biden violently destroying everything in his sight, from our once-great Economy to our once-fair Justice System.” Far better to elect Trump, a guy with documented experience in destroying everything in his sight, to make sure it’s done thoroughly.
Trump didn’t explain how Biden had corrupted Colorado but not Michigan or Minnesota, but he didn’t have to because he’s just making shit up, we all know that anyway the end.
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Speaking as someone who’s actually helped draft legislation, the reason Trump gets away with all these things that are adjudicated and found to be legal is because no reasonable legislator ever suspected that some fool would be shameless or crazy enough to pull this bullshit.
The absurdity of our country is just too much sometimes.
The constitution says insurrectionists can’t hold office. It’s pretty fucking explicit about this and yet we’re going to ignore it because the framers didn’t give us detailed stereo instructions on how to say no to insurrectionists.
On the other hand, nowhere in the constitution does it say 81 birthday candles is too many birthday candles to be president. And yet we’ve pulled a rule out of our collective asses saying it is.