Commentary by Sanford D. Horn
March 4, 2024
Less than 24 hours before the polls are due to open in 15 states for Super Tuesday primaries, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled unanimously on Monday, March 4 that the Colorado Supreme Court decision barring former President Donald Trump from their primary ballot cannot stand.
While the justices took various and in some cases circuitous routes to arrive at “yes,” their unanimity delivers a definitive and solid message that courts or singular individuals will not decide elections. More importantly, it is the will of the people - the legal, voting age, registered voting citizens of the United States who undertake the enormous responsibility of ensuring the preservation of the Constitution and all its protections.
When asked about the impact of the Supreme Court’s nine-nothing vote on the remaining states that have either decided to remove Trump from their ballots or are suing to do so, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley responded, “I think they’re all dead as Dillinger.” Turley is certainly not known as a conservative, but a level-headed, fair thinker, capable of being objective.
“Colorado, Maine, most recently Illinois - those are the outliers. Many of those other people that rejected them were Democrats who did the right thing, like the three liberal justices on the court. They stood with their colleagues, spoke with one voice and said, enough; that we are not going to introduce what Justice Jackson referred to as ‘an undemocratic interpretation of the 14th Amendment.’ We should take some solace and encouragement from that. I think the court is showing this divided country that there are still things that bind us to each other - a certain covenant of faith that we can find in the Constitution,” said Turley.
According to Lawfare, the Supreme Court ruling reversed the ballot disqualifications of Trump in California, Colorado, Illinois, Maine, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Of that group of 10 states, half of them - California, Colorado, Maine, North Carolina, and Virginia go to the polls on Super Tuesday.
Part of the Supreme Court ruling indicated it is up to Congress, not the states, to make such decisions impacting federal elections; that Section Three of the 14th Amendment is supported by Section Five of that same amendment. In the case of Donald J. Trump, Petitioner v. Norma Anderson, et al, (Anderson being one of six Colorado residents to officially call for Trump’s dismissal from that state’s ballot.) the Supreme Court reversed the decision issued by the Colorado state supreme court in December 2023. The Colorado state supreme court decided against Trump in a four to three vote by seven Democrat justices - a margin slim enough to understand the gravity of such a decision, that by a margin of one vote, one justice, one person decided for an entire state for whom the citizenry should have the opportunity to vote. That’s dangerous.
As Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz has oft-said, he wants Trump on the ballot because he wants the opportunity to vote against the man for the third time (2016 and 2020).
“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, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”
Nowhere does this section mention the office of the President of the United States. “We granted former President Trump’s petition for certiorari, which raised a single question: “Did the Colorado Supreme Court err in ordering President Trump excluded from the 2024 presidential primary ballot?” See 601 U. S. ___ (2024). Concluding that it did, we now reverse,” wrote the Supreme Court on pages three and four in its ruling per curium. (Per curium indicates the court’s ruling was written and issued by the court as a unit and not by any specific judge or justice.)
Section Five of the 14th Amendment, in support of Section Three, reads in its entirety: “The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”
Page six of the March 4 Supreme Court ruling states definitively, “This case raises the question whether the States, in addition to Congress, may also enforce Section 3. We conclude that States may disqualify persons holding or attempting to hold state office. But States have no power under the Constitution to enforce Section 3 with respect to federal offices, especially the Presidency.”
US Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) said the Supreme Court decision is “monumental.”
Trump himself called the ruling, “very well crafted. …I think it will go a long way to bringing the country together. The voters can take the person out of the race very quickly. …A great day for liberty.”
“I think this was the right decision,” said former US Rep. Harold Ford, Jr. (D-TN). “I think it was important for the Court to speak declaratively with one voice. I agree, this will settle this issue, and leave it to the voters,” said Ford, a panelist on the Fox News program, “The Five.”
Lest anyone think this decision is about Trump, yes, he is the current beneficiary of the nine-nothing Supreme Court vote, make no mistake who the real victors are here: the American people, our Democratic-Republic, and quite frankly the world. The United States is the beacon of freedom - after all, why are millions upon millions of people trying to enter the United States by whatever means necessary (another issue for another column). Quite frankly, the words from the liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elana Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, in their concurring opinion of March 4, speak volumes regarding the importance of not upholding Colorado’s decision. “Allowing Colorado to do so, would, we agree, create a chaotic state-by-state patchwork, at odds with our Nation’s federalism principles. That is enough to resolve this case.”
All those shortsighted people yelling that Trump is a Nazi and a threat to democracy and must be removed from all ballots far and wide are the true, genuine threats to democracy. Their visceral hatred of Trump, which clearly overshadows their respect and support of the Constitution, while legal, is dangerous. These are the people who believe one person - a state secretary of state - should decide for hundreds of thousands to millions of citizens for whom they should be allowed to vote. If they got their way on March 4 and the Supreme Court fostered an alternative ruling, imagine the chaos that would ensue as Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson suggest would invariably occur.
Suppose Trump is removed from ballots in Colorado, Maine, Illinois, and perhaps the entirety of the left coast and New England. Perhaps Biden is removed from ballots for cause - say faulty cognition, from the Deep South, the Plains region, and Big Sky country. Consider the Balkanization of the voting process or that the election could be decided by 50 individuals before Election Day itself. Does that sound like a Democratic-Republic?
No, that’s the slippery slope to becoming communist Russia. If Russia, under the despotic regime of Vladimir Putin, can’t ban opponents from the “ballot,” those opponents mysteriously fall prey to some malady a la the Soviet leaders who disappeared for days, then weeks before anyone learns he has a “cold.” A “cold” that ultimately claims his life. This is not a tale of fiction to be found in Chekov, Dostoyevsky, Pushkin, or Tolstoy. The February 16, 2024 questionable death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, 47, is being widely attributed to Putin in global circles. Navalny, born June 4, 1976 in the village of Butyn, in the Moscow region, attempted to challenge Putin, but summarily found himself barred from running in 2018 - deemed ineligible due to a prior conviction. This past August, already serving an 11.5 year sentence, a Russian court added an additional 19 more years, on what Navalny called trumped up charges - no pun intended. He died in a Russian penal colony two months after Putin’s announcement he would stand for reelection in 2024.
That is not how political opponents are “handled” in the United States. Or is it? How many opponents of the Biden administration are anonymously sitting in prisons because of alleged crimes committed on January 6, 2021? That is also not the American way. The First Amendment of the Constitution is designed to protect people’s right of free speech, as well as their right to assemble peaceably.
Even Eugene V. Debs, (1855-1926), born in Terre Haute, IN, where he served as city clerk and later as a member of the state legislature, ran for president - from jail. The perennial candidate for the Socialist Party of America, of which he was a co-founder, Debs ran for president five times in every election from 1900 through 1920, save for 1916. The advocate for organized labor and unionism grew in popularity with each campaign earning 94,768 votes in 1900 and by 1920 Debs garnered 917,799 votes from prison. Debs served time for criticizing the US government’s policy of prosecuting people accused of violating the Espionage Act of 1917.
If the likes of a Eugene V. Debs could run for president from a jail cell, certainly a candidate not having been charged with any crime, let alone convicted of one, should remain on the ballots across the nation. Those who continue to object, have the right to vote against that candidate, as Dershowitz looks forward to doing.
Trump’s lone remaining GOP rival, former South Carolina Governor and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, while speaking in Spring, TX , said “the Supreme Court ruled today that Donald Trump can stay on the ballot.” Followed by a light chorus of boos, Haley continued, “No, I think that was important. We don’t ever want some elected official in a state, or anybody else saying who can and can’t be on a ballot. This is America. This is America. Look, I’ll defeat Donald Trump fair and square, but I want him on that ballot.”
The White House should have the good sense to realize the bullet the nation, and the free world, dodged, and applaud the Supreme Court for their perspicacious ruling. The optics of the White House seeking the de-balloting of Biden’s future opponent would shout Putin.
In her concurring opinion of March 4, Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote, “In my judgment this is not the time to amplify disagreement with stridency. The Court has settled a politically charged issue in the volatile season of a Presidential election. Particularly in this circumstance, writings on the Court should turn the national temperature down, not up. For present purposes, our differences are far less important than our unanimity: All nine Justices agree on the outcome of this case. That is the message Americans should take home.”
Sanford D. Horn is a writer and educator living in Westfield, IN.
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