Secretaries of state are, indeed, charged with determining who can and cannot be on the ballot. At least that is the case in most states. Secretaries of State are generally the highest election official in each state and it is their constitutional duty to interpret and apply election laws and administer statewide elections. For example, Trump does not automatically get to be on the ballot here in Washington State. He has to meet all the requirements which includes signature requirements for primary elections, and party endorsements for general elections. The secretary of state is in charge of all of that.HondurasKeiser wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 8:58 pm My apologies for using the word certify…he opens, reads and counts the various electoral counts. The novel theory as I said, was that he could choose to not accept a certain state’s slate of electors.
Likewise, a novel reading of the 14th amendment gives secretaries of state the power to determine if someone running for office participated in an insurrection.
They are equivalent in their silliness and unseriousness.
We actually have 50 state elections for president, not one Federal election.
More realistically though, this seems something that would be determined by the courts. But the courts would generally have to have some action by some secretary of state in order to review. So, some citizen challenges the right of Trump to be on the ballot in some state. The secretary of state makes a ruling agreeing. And then it gets challenged and appealed to the courts.
You may think it is silly and unserious, but it is already happening.
Michigan: https://michiganadvance.com/2023/08/29/ ... -michigan/
New Hampshire: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurk ... 444cf2e9a8
Florida: https://www.sun-sentinel.com/2023/08/25 ... suit-says/
And generally: https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/31/politics ... index.html
Finally, there are legal scholars who indeed believe this is all self-implementing and doesn't require Trump to actually be convicted:A post-Civil War provision of the 14th Amendment says any American official who takes an oath to uphold the Constitution is disqualified from holding any future office if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion.” However, the Constitution does not spell out how to enforce this ban and it has only been applied twice since the late 1800s, when it was used extensively against former Confederates.
New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan, a Republican, said earlier this week that he asked the state’s attorney general to examine the matter and advise him on the “provision’s potential applicability to the upcoming presidential election cycle.” The attorney general’s office said it was “carefully reviewing the legal issues.”
In the statement, Scanlan said he wasn’t taking a position on the disqualification question and was not “seeking to take certain action” but was going to study the matter in anticipation of lawsuits.
And Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, said last week in an interview with MSNBC she would consult with her fellow election officials in other key states and that they will “likely need to act in concert, if we act at all” regarding the constitutional challenges, which she predicted will ultimately be settled “in the courts.”
In an Aug. 19 article in The Atlantic, J. Michael Luttig, a conservative former judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals, and Laurence Tribe, a liberal law professor, endorsed the position advanced by Baude and Paulsen, saying Trump’s attempts to overturn the election “place him squarely within the ambit of the disqualification clause.”
“The disqualification clause operates independently of any such criminal proceedings and, indeed, also independently of impeachment proceedings and of congressional legislation,” they wrote. “The clause was designed to operate directly and immediately upon those who betray their oaths to the Constitution, whether by taking up arms to overturn our government or by waging war on our government by attempting to overturn a presidential election through a bloodless coup.”