Colorado Supreme Court: Donald Trump is an insurrectionist and must be removed from the 2024 ballot

Early today we linked to a piece asking “when, if ever, can a democracy exclude anti-democratic politicians and parties from democratic elections?” Read it here.

Well, it appears that the Colorado Supreme Court has its own ideas on the matter. Here is CNN:

The Colorado Supreme Court decision disqualifying Donald Trump from the 2024 primary ballot reversed the trial judge’s conclusion that the 14th Amendment’s “insurrectionist ban” doesn’t apply to the presidency. 

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment says:

“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State,” if they took an oath to “support” the Constitution and then engaged in insurrection.
But it doesn’t say anything about the presidency.

The trial judge concluded that because of the vagueness and omissions in the constitutional amendment, the ban doesn’t apply to the presidency. 

But the Colorado Supreme Court disagreed. The court said there was enough evidence to conclude that “the drafters of this Amendment intended the phrase ‘any office’ to be broadly inclusive, and certainly to include the Presidency.” 

“We do not place the same weight the district court did on the fact that the Presidency is not specifically mentioned in Section Three. It seems most likely that the Presidency is not specifically included because it is so evidently an ‘office,’” the court said in its decision. 

The justices continued: “A conclusion that the Presidency is something other than an office ‘under’ the United States is fundamentally at odds with the idea that all government officials, including the President, serve ‘we the people.’”

Read more here.