Surprise!!

  • oxjox@lemmy.ml
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    8 months ago

    The constitution is very clear about who is eligible to be president.

    No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

    Constitutionally, aside from those who don’t qualify, yes everyone does have the right to run for president.

    There are a couple arguments regarding “the office” and “an official” and “participated in an insurrection” that may or may not disqualify someone from being federally permitted to “be” president or permitted to be on a state election ballot. States already have different rules to make it onto a ballot. Just in the past couple weeks, Biden wasn’t on the NH primary ballot (he won as a write in).

    If all the red states decided they didn’t want Biden on the ballot, they could decide who would be president before the election even took place. To prevent that from happening, it needs to be determined what the rules are and the legal precedent needs to be established for state courts to decide the legal battles.

    We all know what happened on January 6th. But there’s a lot of people who want to misrepresent that history. I can’t believe this is the case but it is now reasonable to assume that a state could make up new history and say Biden was a participant in insurrection or guilty of treason and disqualify him from being on the ballot.

    • Dkarma@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Congrats on reading part of the applicable sections of the Constitution. Now read the one that actually applies here.

      The part about insurrection. It is already clear based on congressional oversight of the executive branch that he is an insurrectionist. That’s what the bi partisan j6 commission determined. There is no need for the courts here at all as nowhere does it say he needs to be convicted.

      In fact former uses of this law didn’t require a conviction. There’s already case law supporting that fact.

      • oxjox@lemmy.ml
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        8 months ago

        I understand all that. I believe the issue is how this is handled. Is it up to the states? Is it up to congress? Is it up to the presidential electors? Is it up to the DNC / RNC? Who’s the entity that determines who is and is not on the ballot?

        As I think I understand it, the issue at hand is if a state has the authority to unilaterally bar a ‘presidential candidate’ from a ‘general election ballot’ for this reason.

        Does the state get to determine on their own that the candidate is illegible? What is it in the state’s constitution that says so? Shouldn’t such a fact be established on a federal level to prevent the candidate from appearing on all ballots? These things aren’t clear in the constitution.

        • meowMix2525@lemm.ee
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          8 months ago

          illegible

          The word you’re looking for is ineligible.

          Noticed this in your other comment and thought it was a typo but now you’ve forced my hand lol. Illegible means not legible, as in scrawled handwriting or bad print that is too sloppy to read.