Who should decide who gets on the ballot?

The recent decision of the Colorado Supreme Court disqualifying Donald Trump from the 2024 ballot in Colorado is, well, unusual. Such a thing has never happened before in the history of the United States. The decision is not necessarily wrong, but it is unusual. What is far more unusual is that the Colorado Supreme Court was asked to judge whether Mr. Trump engaged in insurrection against the United States.

Spoiler alert: he did. On January 6, 2021, the then sitting President of the United States tried to overturn the result of the November 2020 Presidential election by force and violence.

We all saw what happened on January 6, 2021, with our own eyes. An angry mob, festooned with Trump flags and regalia, assaulted the United States Capitol building. The angry mob attacked Congress as it was duty-bound to count the electoral votes of the November 2020 Presidential election. The winner of that election was Joe Biden, 306-232 in electoral votes, 81 million over 74 million in popular votes.

There is no good-faith dispute about this; Joe Biden won. If you believe otherwise, you have been misled by the onslaught of propaganda and outright lies from Trump and his cronies. And worse, you are lying to yourself. Steve Pearce may be able to extend his political relevance by carefully perpetuating this myth and even putting forward fake electors, but his dissembling serves only to extend the career of a man past his political expiration date.

The peaceful transfer of power from one presidential administration to the next is one of the foundational pillars of American democracy, and one of the brightest lights of American exceptionalism because we have honored this tradition of transferring power for the whole of our history. Until 2021. Prior to January 6, 2021, there had never been a non-peaceful transfer of power from one presidential administration to the next. Ever. Mr. Trump is the first President to refuse to honor American exceptionalism, and he demonstrated this when he refused to honor the result of the November 2020 election.

My belief is that that Mr. Trump is wholly unfit for any political office because he is a bleedingly obvious conman. He does not give a damn about democracy, or the Constitution, or maintaining a republican form of government. He cares, only and solely, about himself.

I am also aware that a substantial number of Americans believe Mr. Trump is a savior, one who must be supported no matter the circumstance. I do not understand this devotion to a man who has shown, openly, that he does not respect democracy, American exceptionalism, nor the Constitution.

Mr. Trump recently told Sean Hannity that he will not be a dictator, nor abuse his Presidential powers, except on “day one” of his Presidency on January 20, 2025. This is disqualifying. A serious man does not joke about ‘dictatorship’ and ‘being an American President’ in the same breath. As Maya Angelou taught, when a man tells you what he is, believe him.

However, the recent decision of the Colorado Supreme Court disqualifying Donald Trump from the 2024 ballot in Colorado is unusual. Unusual in the sense that one does not normally expect a State’s Supreme Court to render a judicial opinion that a candidate for the Presidency is ineligible to appear on that State’s ballot because the candidate engaged in insurrection against the United States outside of the Civil War era. And unusual in the sense that it was Republican voters who brought the suit from the beginning. Seems there is a small, but significant, group of Republicans who recognize that Mr. Trump is a dire threat to the American experiment in democratic governance.

The United States Supreme Court will have to take up this matter. While I am an attorney, I am no Constitutional scholar. It is hard to say where the 14^th Amendment, more than 150 years after the Civil War, should be invoked as Mr. Trump has not yet been convicted of any of the charges related to interfering with the election. It may be that this decision should be left to American voters.

As it stands now, democracy and the Constitutional requirement of a republican form of government are on the ballot in 2024. The choice, at present, is between a self-absorbed fool who sees American exceptionalism as a mob-boss opportunity, and a long-in-the-tooth adherent to the slow and often frustrating functioning of American exceptionalism. Although perhaps not ideal, this should not be a hard choice.

I am pretty sure that Vladimir Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China support Mr. Trump for their own selfish and reasons. They are tyrants. If you share their view, perhaps you ought to rethink your choice.

Darrell M. Allen is an employment and criminal defense attorney. He lives with a nice Republican lady north of I-40, where they run one head of dog and two of cat.

This article originally appeared on Las Cruces Sun-News: Who should decide who gets on the ballot?