Is Keeping Trump Off The Ballot Anti-Democratic?

Two states (Colorado and Maine) have banned Donald Trump from appearing on primary ballots. Trump has said he would appeal the decisions.

It is not yet known whether those bans will be overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, or whether the court will even take up the appeals. But right-wingers are floating a new argument to keep Trump on the ballot in all states. They say the bans are purely political, and anti-democratic.

Those are specious arguments. First, the bans are not political - they are legal arguments. Trump fomented and directed an effort to overturn the result of the 2020 election. And he sent a violent crowd to the Capitol to prevent the electoral votes from being counted and verified. That was insurrection, and the Constitution clearly prohibits those guilty of insurrection from running for or holding any public office in the United States.

It is also not anti-democratic. Democracy cannot work without rules that are respected and obeyed by citizens and political leaders. Without rules, we would live in a dod-eat-dog nation where anything goes - including the overturning of the will of voters. That's not democracy - it is anarchy.

Our democracy is based on rules. Those rules are contained in the Constitution. Ignoring the constitutional rules is the opposite of democracy.

Trump wants to seize power in spite of the fact that he was rejected by voters. In addition to having the fewest electoral votes, he had 7 million fewer citizen votes.

Would the right-wingers wanting Trump on the ballot think it was anti-democratic if a Democrat wanted to run after committing an act of insurrection. Of course not. They would be screaming about Article 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution - and they would be right. The anti-democratic part is making an exception to the rules for they favorite Republican candidate.