I loathe Donald Trump. But what the Colorado Supreme Court did is absolutely wrong | Opinion

Democrats cheering the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to strip Donald Trump from the state’s 2024 primary ballot should pause their celebration. The last thing they should do is jump on the bandwagon and strip him from the ballot in more states as politicians urged California’s secretary of state to do.

The decision in Colorado was made by a court closely divided 4-3. That’s significant because all seven members of the court are Democratic appointees. Even for Democratic appointees, the plan to remove Trump from the ballot is no easy call. Indeed, the chief justice of the court was on the losing end of the decision.

And it is to Chief Justice Brian Boatright’s dissent that we should look for the best outline of why this decision is premature. There are procedural and technical legal reasons for Boatright’s views, but at its core is the idea of the rule of law, as important a principle in our government as democracy.

The chief justice notes that no court anywhere in the United States has held a full fact-finding proceeding that has determined Trump is an insurrectionist. Without that finding, it is inappropriate for the Colorado Supreme Court or any court to banish Trump from the ballot for being an insurrectionist.

To be clear, I am not denying that what happened on Jan. 6, 2021 was an insurrection aimed at overthrowing the lawful and fair election of Joe Biden. Nor am I denying that Trump orchestrated the whole sorry affair with his trusty Twitter fingers and a fiery speech that turned a crowd of supporters into a violent mob. We all saw it happen.

But Trump, for all his flaws, is still a U.S. citizen and he has a right to his day in court. It is inconvenient, even tragic, that the soonest proceedings in Georgia or Washington, D.C., will put him on trial for the core issues at stake here will happen in March, well after the primaries are underway — but that is our system.

Boatright argues that electoral challenges are appropriate only for relatively easy questions of biographical fact: Is the candidate old enough to run for Senate? Is he a natural-born citizen? The quick proceedings of the electoral process are not appropriate for complex questions of guilt and innocence, such as allegations that Trump is an insurrectionist.

For such questions, our legal system is maddeningly slow and it proceeds toward justice in fits and starts. Often, it seems like justice doesn’t matter. Ask anyone who has been falsely accused or worse, been imprisoned for a crime they didn’t commit. But it is the best we have come up with so far, and we should let it run its course, not short-circuit the process with a premature decision by a closely divided court.

I loathe Donald Trump. He was toxic when he was spreading the lie that President Barack Obama was born in Africa, and he only became more so when he ran for office and the sickness deepened once he was in power. He corrupts everything he touches.

Before he was even elected to office, I wrote that he would be the worst president since Jefferson Davis, the slavery-defending, loser of the Civil War. I wrote that we’d be lucky if Trump was impeached during the transition, not knowing that he’d go on to be impeached twice, both cases in which a principled Senate would have convicted him and prevented him from running for office again.

Kicking political opponents off the ballot is a tool that tyrants use in Iran and China and Russia. A democratic republic like ours should use its power cautiously and only when the accused have had their day in court.

David Mastio, a former editor and columnist for USA Today, is a regional editor for The Center Square and a regular Star Opinion correspondent.