California secretary of state declines to remove Donald Trump from presidential primary ballot
California secretary of state declines to remove Donald Trump from presidential primary ballot
Dr. Shirley Weber made her decision despite a call for her to take that step from California's lieutenant governor.
What a coward! Nobody who's not part of the cult has any doubt about the fact that he's a traitor and if the "justice" system wasn't thoroughly broken, he'd be in a cell already.
The SoS just doesn't have the guts to do what's right and then deal with the consequences.
just wait another cycle and red states will be removing a democrat for some complete bullshit reason
They already tried to cheat the last election then overturn it with violence, it's too late for protecting the rights feels to keep them from acting in bad faith.
it's not a great precedent as it will likely be abused by republicans later
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Dr. Shirley Weber's office did not immediately issue a comment on her decision to include Trump after releasing the list of certified candidates on Thursday night.
She did not indicate if she would fulfill Kounalakis's request and said her decision would be guided by her office's "commitment to and respect for the rule of law."
"Removing a candidate from the ballot under Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment is not something my office takes lightly and is not as simple as the requirement that a person be at least 35 years old to be president," Weber wrote.
The calls to strike the former president from the state's ballot came after Colorado's Supreme Court did the same thing, saying he violated the "insurrection clause," a Civil War-era provision of the U.S. Constitution.
"The U.S. Constitution does not tolerate an assault on the foundations of our government, and Section 336 requires me to act in response," Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, wrote in her decision.
"Given the compressed timeframe, the novel constitutional questions involved, the importance of this case, and impending ballot preparation deadlines, I will suspend the effect of my decision until the Superior Court rules on any appeal, or the time to appeal …has expired," Bellows added.
The original article contains 282 words, the summary contains 205 words. Saved 27%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Decent job by the bot but what’s missing is Bellows is Maine’s SoS who decided to remove Trump from that state’s primary ballot, pending a decision by the Maine Superior Court.
It's truly disappointing when the good guys want to "fight fair" against quite literally the 1 situation where the founders put a backup plan in case of massive corruption of the system.
Well it's begun, and it's hard to imagine how SCOTUS will word their eventual ruling.
If CO, ME, CA can stick with removing GOP candidates, then Republican states will be removing Biden from ballots using the exact same 14th, Section 3, under "aiding enemies".
The 90% of the electoral college will be known by mid summer, and it will be up to ten states elections with all national monies being flooded into them.
See also as evidence of the GOP plan.
https://www.congress.gov/117/bills/hres1532/BILLS-117hres1532ih.pdf
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/dec/26/gop-could-bounce-biden-from-ballots-too/
And what crimes exactly has Biden committed that would disqualify him under the 14th? What "enemies" has he been aiding?
This is how we end up with a second civil war.
Biden gets removed in republican states. Trump gets removed in democratic states. Trump gets elected in Republican states. Biden gets elected in democratic states. Suddenly the nation is split.
The US is already fractured and much closer to a civil uprising and maybe a civil war than most people want to admit. Mass shootings that are often politically motivated happen nearly daily, as close to a non functioning Congress as you could get, and apparently anyone can say anything and claim they are correct regardless of facts.
Extremism has been ramping up for years, there's nothing sudden about it. Welcome to 'Who's Country Is It Anyway?' where everything's made up and the points don't matter.
Substantively, it matters little as it's not as though Trump was ever going to win CA. Symbolically, it means quite a bit. Though there are genuine points to made, notably that Trump hasn't been convicted of the charges yet.
Ultimately the safest thing to do is to let the people decide because opening the precedent to deny people access to ballots because of lower court decisions or pending indictments could be abused by fascists down the road.
A) under section 3 he doesn't need to be convicted of anything.
B) fascists don't need an excuse to abuse their power, which is why the can't be allowed to achieve a position of power.
A) what are you suggesting? That the mere accusation is sufficient?
Regarding B) , I'm sorry but it's because of those systems of checks & balances that our democracy buckled but did not break. If you open said door to denying anyone the capacity to run for office under such grounds, it's a very easy, weak link of the chain, to abuse. It's a high bar to convince me that this is a good idea. After conviction of conspiracy to defraud the US and rights of citizens at the federal level in Smith's case, I'd be far more convinced..
Humoring your argument for just a second, the "safest" thing to do is to stop the delay tactics and let the court case play out then, wouldn't you agree?
I would agree. And yeah I'm as anxious to get the trials started sooner than later as everyone else. For all intents I agree Trump and the Republican Party is a threat to the nation and that he's guilty, personally. Nevertheless the accused have these rights afforded to them for a reason. Some may use them to delay; others may use them to ensure they have a fair trial.
This is the primary ballot. Denying him a spot on the primary ballot would make it harder to win the nomination.