Group to pull Trump from Oregon ballot “don’t need to prove harm”?

By Taxpayers Association of Oregon
OregonWatchdog.com

OPB Reports, “Attorneys representing the Oregon voters who are suing to keep former President Donald Trump off the ballot insisted in court documents filed this week that they don’t need to prove they’d be harmed by Trump running for election.Ballots like this one shown in this 2022 file photo may not have former President Donald Trump on them for the May primary. The Oregon Supreme Court is expected to soon rule on the matter. Critics argue Trump should not be allowed to run for president because of his involvement in spurring the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection in the nation’s capital…The Oregon Supreme Court last week asked the voters, who are represented by two Portland attorneys and the national advocacy group Free Speech for People, to file an additional brief explaining whether they had a right to sue in the case and whether Oregon law allows Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade to determine whether a presidential candidate is qualified to serve. With final documents filed late Tuesday, the court can issue its decision on the case at any time.”

We previously listed these reasons why this lawsuit is terrible:

• The Washington Post Associate Editor Ruth Marcus states, “Section 3 of the 14th Amendment should not be used to prevent Americans from voting to elect the candidate of their choice“

• The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board notes,”This would seem to violate the due-process protections that are explicit elsewhere in the Constitution. Removing Mr. Trump by fiat would also deny voters the constitutional right to vote for the candidate of their choice. See Reynolds v. Sims (1964), among other precedents. This is precisely the right that Mr. Smith, the special prosecutor, accuses Mr. Trump of violating. Democrats would arguably be committing the same offense.”

• The decision split the Colorado Court. Colorado Justice Carlos Samour Jr. wrote in the dissent, “More broadly, I am disturbed about the potential chaos wrought by an imprudent, unconstitutional, and standardless system in which each state gets to adjudicate Section Three disqualification cases on an ad hoc basis. Surely, this enlargement of state power is antithetical to the framers’ intent.”

• The Georgia Secretary of State noted “Invoking the 14th Amendment is merely the newest way of attempting to short-circuit the ballot box. Since 2018, Georgia has seen losing candidates and their lawyers try to sue their way to victory. It doesn’t work. Stacey Abrams’s claims of election mismanagement following the 2018 election were rejected in court, as were Mr. Trump’s after the 2020 election.Mr. Trump might win the nomination and general election. Or he could lose. The outcomes should be determined by the people who show up to make their preference known in primaries (including Georgia’s on March 12) and the general election on Nov. 5. A process that denies voters their chance to be the deciding factor in the nomination and election process would erode the belief in our uniquely American representative democracy. For a secretary of state to remove a candidate would only reinforce the grievances of those who see the system as rigged and corrupt. Denying voters the opportunity to choose is fundamentally un-American.”

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