The 14th Amendment to the Constitution bans anyone who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” the U.S. from holding office.

The 14th Amendment to the Constitution bans anyone who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” the U.S. from holding office.

A Florida lawyer is suing Donald Trump in an attempt to disqualify his current run for president. Lawrence A. Caplan’s Thursday lawsuit claims that the ex-president’s involvement in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot would make him ineligible to run again, thanks to the Constitution’s 14th Amendment—a Civil War-era addition aimed at preventing those who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” the U.S. from holding office. “Now given that the facts seem to be crystal clear that Trump was involved to some extent in the insurrection that took place on January 6th, the sole remaining question is whether American jurists who swear an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution upon their entry to the bench, will choose to follow the letter of the Constitution in this case,” the lawsuit says, also citing Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia. Legal experts say it’s an uphill battle to argue in court, since the amendment has hardly been exercised in modern history. “Realistically, it’s not a Hail Mary, but it’s just tossing the ball up and hoping it lands in the right place,” Charles Zelden, a professor of history and legal studies at Nova Southeastern University, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

archive link to South Florida Sun Sentinel article: https://archive.ph/1BntD

  • oxjox@lemmy.mlEnglish
    9·
    1 year ago

    Anecdotal data is wholly irrelevant when you have laws upholding the results and should have no bearing on convincing you of one or another thing.

    Yes, we know that every election has some fraud. A lot of it is unintentional and a lot of it has been perpetrated by republican voters.
    There were fewer than 475 cases of voter fraud found in the 2020 election. https://fortune.com/2021/12/14/trump-voter-fraud-investigation-biden-battleground-states-only-475-potential-voter-fraud-cases/
    https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/21/politics/fact-check-republicans-voter-fraud-kirk-hartle/index.html
    The ultra-conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation has recorded just 1.438 proven instances of voter fraud going back to the 1990s.
    https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud

    There has been an attack on our country by a sitting president to destabilize the people’s trust in the principle element of democracy. It has worked extremely effectively as nearly everyone will now question how valid an election really is - the kernel of doubt has been sown. Yet there was zero Z.E.R.O. reason to question the results of the 2020 election.

    Trump and his allies had claimed there was voter fraud because the polls prior to the election indicated he was in the lead while the results of the election contradicted the polls. There was also the previously known and reported and anticipated timing of events where mail in ballots were counted in bulk at odd times. Everyone knew the votes would be counted in chunks and that one candidate would quickly pull ahead of the other. We even knew that a lot of republicans weren’t going to vote because it was already anticipated (for no reason) that the election would be rigged. As entirely fictional reports of voter fraud made their way through the zeitgeist, they grabbed onto these stories and presented them as fact with zero evidence to back them up (looking at you pillow guy). The cases were thrown out of court because the lawyers had absolutely no evidence to present to the judges.

    Anecdotal stories are irrelevant when the sitting president of the United States is known to have fucked this country over. He’s an evil narcissist and anyone who believes him to be anything else is a fool participating in his intentional dismantling of our democracy for his personal gain and pleasure.

    You shouldn’t be “thinking” there wasn’t enough fraud to sway the election. You should know this to be 100% factually true just as you know it to be 100% factually true that the moon is a sphere. What’s on or inside the moon is certainly up for debate ;-)

      • oxjox@lemmy.mlEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        I haven’t heard about that but I would say so, yes. Can you share these stories?

          • dragonflyteaparty@lemmy.world
            3·
            1 year ago

            These things don’t really seem to be equivalent. The idea in the 2020 election is that there were illegal votes cast and votes illegally purged and that allowed Biden to win. The idea in the 2016 election is more on misinformation on part of Russia and other sources. One is aledging illegal votes while the other is aledging misinformation. Those are pretty different things. And your first link is just about a few Democrats who are concerned about the security of voting machines and want to strengthen said security.