Trump Faces Potential Ballot Removal: What it Means for Upcoming Elections

Elections are normally quite tumultuous, however, recent events and news are making the 2024 presidential election messy to say the least. 

Republican candidate Donald Trump has been involved in four separate criminal cases within the past year and has been answering to a total of 91 felony counts. 

Some citizens believe that this is not behavior a president should be involved with, and are making efforts to have him removed from the election ballot. 

Already, he has been removed from Maine and Colorado’s primary ballots, but 34 other states have since then filed complaints to get him removed. 

18 states’ efforts have been dismissed by the Supreme Court, while 16 states’ concerns have been left undecided. 

This had originally been brought to the Court’s attention because of Section Three of the 14th Amendment, which states that no person involved in Congress should have previously been involved in “insurrection or rebellion” of any kind. 

With Trump’s charges in court, it’s being debated on whether he is still allowed to be a candidate in the upcoming election. 

Though he has been removed from Colorado and Maine’s primary ballots, he is likely to still be in the 2024 election because of the support Trump has from other states. 

The decision to remove the former president from the ballot started in Maine when Secretary of State, Shenna Bellows, made a ruling under the insurrection clause in the 14th Amendment. 

According to recent events, Bellows has revoked her ruling, due to the Trump campaign saying it would appeal Bellows’ decision, or basically just make a public statement about it. 

This has also caused other states to be wary in efforts to get the former president removed from the ballot, and is believed to be some of the reason that their efforts have been rejected by the Supreme Court. 

However, getting someone taken off the ballot will be a harrowing and confusing task, mostly because of the fact that Congress can simply choose to ignore the disqualification if there’s a majority rule on the matter. 

Another reason that this might prove to be problematic is because there is nothing directly in our constitution that states that we can recall a president from the election. 

While we are allowed to impeach a president, there are no direct amendments or laws that control how or why we vote someone off the ballot, leaving citizens at a loss for how to handle the situation. 

The recall of a president has never really been debated as much as it has right now, but because Trump has not been legally found guilty of his charges, states cannot take much action to get him removed from the election.