A 4-3 majority of the Colorado Supreme Court has decided that elections are risky schemes because the people might pick someone the court doesn’t like.
Their conclusion?
Toss the election before it happens.
On Tuesday, the state of Colorado’s highest court ruled that Donald Trump can’t appear on the state’s presidential primary or general election ballots in 2024 because he committed “insurrection” in connection with the U.S. Capitol riot of January 6, 2021.
Presumably the U.S. Supreme Court will soon slap down this attempted end-around of representative democracy. But the damage is done: A court has gone where no court should ever go.
The Colorado court’s decision relies on wrong facts and poor legal analysis to claim breathtaking power heretofore only envisioned and enacted by banana republic dictators bent on disqualifying their political opponents.
Here’s an excerpt from one of the bad-facts sections of the opinion, from page 111:
“President Trump then gave a speech in which he literally exhorted his supporters to fight at the Capitol.”
No, he didn’t.
As NewBostonPost explained in detail in January 2021, Trump committed no “insurrection” before or during the January 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol. He did not incite the riots either with his words or tone during his rally speech.
Trump didn’t seem angry during the speech and never suggested anyone do anything illegal.
Trump “literally” told the crowd “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” His speech “literally” ended with a recording of The Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.”
Now, the riot and occupation of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 was a terrible event that should never have occurred and should never be repeated.
It came about because of multiple failures – the failure by certain Trump supporters to act rationally and decently, and the failure of the Democratic leadership in Congress at the time (chiefly Nancy Pelosi) to adequately defend the U.S. Capitol grounds and building by deploying enough U.S. Capitol Police to do the job.
Trump didn’t cover himself with glory that day once the rioters entered the U.S. Capitol building, as NewBostonPost also explained in an earlier editorial. In fact, that tone-deaf and somewhat passive response is the main reason he is merely the current frontrunner in the 2024 presidential election and not the prohibitive favorite.
But the idea that he somehow disqualified himself from running again is ridiculous.
Whether Trump goes back to the White House is rightly the people’s decision, not some court’s.
When wacko court decisions are handed down by divided jurists, it’s often instructive to check out the dissents. (Every member of the court was appointed by a Democratic governor, by the way, including the three dissenters.)
The chief justice of the Colorado Supreme Court, Brian Boatwright, made a simple and devastating point: If the candidate hasn’t been convicted of insurrection, why would a court find that he is unable to appear on an election ballot?
Another member of the court, Carlos Samour, pointed out that depriving someone from running for office without any sort of trial “flies in the face of the due process doctrine.”
“Procedural due process is one of the aspects of America’s democracy that sets this country apart,” Samour wrote.
A third member of the court, Maria Berkenkotter, noted that the state statute the state supreme court relied on “up until now has been limited to challenges involving relatively straightforward issues, like whether a candidate meets a residency requirement for a school board election.”
“Plus,” she added, “the majority’s approach seems to have no discernible limits.”
That is exactly the point.
The majority of the unelected justices of the Colorado Supreme Court don’t want any limits on their power.
Who is the threat to democracy?
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