Florida Voter Files Federal Lawsuit to Bar Former President Donald Trump from Ballots

Posted on by August 26, 2023

On August 24, a Florida voter, Lawrence Caplan, filed a federal lawsuit seeking to bar former President Donald Trump from being placed on 2024 ballots as a presidential candidate. Caplan v Trump, s.d., 0:23cv-61618. Here is the Complaint.

The Complaint is misguided. The Fourteenth Amendment “insurrection clause” bars individuals from being sworn in to certain offices, but it does not bar them from seeking the office. When the Fourteenth Amendment was passed, there was no mechanism to prevent any voter from voting for any candidate. Thanks to PoliticalWire for this news.

Comments

Florida Voter Files Federal Lawsuit to Bar Former President Donald Trump from Ballots — 56 Comments

  1. It’s misguided for other reasons too. For example, J6 was not an insurrection. Trespass or riot, at most. Even more importantly, Trump was not there, and no evidence that he ordered anyone to do anything illegal has ever been produced, much less found conclusive by courts or by Congress. On the contrary, he publicly told his supporters to protest peacefully and legally, and when a few didn’t listen and got carried away anyway, he publicly asked them to stop. If having some supporters who rioted is disqualifying, the DemoRats will have a really tough time fielding candidates after BLM and other riots.

  2. Actually the specific claim was that he should be barred from the Florida GOP primary, which does not involve Presidential electors. However, the claim on page 6 that a formal indictment is sufficient to trigger disqualification is nonsense on stilts. An indictment is not a conviction or court finding. There is nothing approaching any consensus that President Trump engaged in or ordered any insurrection.

    If no finding by congress or courts is needed, as the author noted, Obama could have been disqualified merely because some people allege he was born in Kenya. If the claim that a formal indictment is the key difference were upheld, which it won’t be, that places far too much power in the unilateral hands of prosecutors, encouraging them to file indictments they cook up solely for the purpose of disqualification of opponents, without the glimmer of a hope of actual conviction from here on out.

    This lawsuit is trash, and deserves appropriate disposal. Was it even filed in the correct venue? I thought Florida primaries are administered by state elections officials, not federal.

  4. If J6th was an insurrection than the Portland and Seattle takeover by antifa should be considered ( and a hunt for all rioters) one too even though it wasn’t against a government building. In fact, there were instances where antifa had weapons and shot conservative bystanders.

  5. Burn loot murder and “anti”Fascists did attack some government buildings. Including in Portland.

  9. PORTLAND AND SEATTLE —-

    MERE 4-4 *DOMESTIC VIOLENCE* ???
    —-
    FAILURE TO INDICT TRUMP WITH INSURRECTION / REBELLION AT 12:01 PM ON 20 JAN 2021 ???

  12. Of course the weren’t brought in 2021. If they had, they would have long been dismissed by now. Naturally, they had to wait until Trump ran again to muck up the election. The indictments serve no other purpose. Their case is laughable. They are themselves insurrectionists, given that their obvious purpose is to prevent a free and fair election. They want to either crown Creepy Joe as King Joseph I the Senile, or else allow only controlled or insignificant opposition to maintain a potemkin village veneer of a constitutional republic.

  13. The alert test is to distract people so FEMA can extend the thousand plus a night Maui resort rooms after the cleanup is over. We were going to keep it on the low, but the hard hitting real news investigative journalists at USA today blew the lid early.

  14. Also, we needed an 8:20 am wake up call just in case we have to make our flights. A lot of us have been partying late every night and sleeping in every morning, so we’ll need it.

  15. FAM, you trying to tell us FEMA booked over a thousand rooms at resorts? No FEMA trailers or pop up campers or tents? No motel 6 or airbnb?

  16. I’m not sure how many rooms we have. I know peasants pay over a thousand a night for each of these bad boys, but we get the government rate, even if wind farms really do kill whales or whatever. Everyone knows the government drives a hard bargain, like when we buy hammers or toilet seats or whatever. It’s just how we roll.

  17. Article 3 of the 14th Amendment constitutes a Constitutional requirement to hold office. For POTUS such Constitutional requirements include the age requirement … 35 years of age.

    The Secretary of State or whoever is in charge of elections in each state can make a determination of Constitutional qualification and when a candidate does not meet such qualification, refuse to place that individual on the ballot. Being a Constitutional requirement, no criminal conviction or indictment is required to apply the restriction. It is a self-executing requirement to hold office.

    Donald John Trump obviously acted in sedition against the United States. He is therefore not qualified to hold office in the United States and can be blocked from the ballot in advance of any election.

    In fact, Failure to keep Donald Trump off the ballot would constitute election interference.

  18. No such thing is even remotely obvious. If state SOS can keep Trump off the ballot, other state SOS can keep Biden off the ballot for accepting bribes, mental incompetence, treason (colluding with China to steal the election, ordering malicious prosecution of Trump, etc). Do you really want to go there? There’s not a damn thing your derp state can throw against Trump that he won’t throw back even harder against you. The days of rolling over and playing your game are done. We’re fighting fire with fire now, and we will save America.

  19. @RW,

    In Texas before government-printed ballots the canvassing authority was required to certify eligibility for the apparent winner.

    Once there were government-printed ballots officials certifying the ballots were required to certify eligibility for office, so that voters would not inadvertently elect an ineligible candidate.

    This has since been extended back through the primary so that an ineligible candidate would be kept off the primary ballot.

  23. Contra Porky the Farmer, Latin pseudo-intellectual version, J6 was an insurrection. But, as when actually submitting to getting a mugshot, when push came to shove, Trump folded like a cheap suit, as is his MO.

    Big Mamma, I have a milkshake for you and Andy Ngo.

  29. Contra pseudoimbecile stockboy, history’s most horrific dictator version, it was not an insurrection, no plan for coup, secession, civil war or anything of that nature having been shown to have existed. A few hundred people out of many thousands getting carried away and ignoring the President’s explicit instructions to protest peacefully is not an insurrection and not in and of itself proof of collusion with the President. That’s just wishful thinking on your part.

    At a bare minimum it should require proof that would stand up in court or congress. Rogue secretaries of state deciding on their own that the President participated in an attempted coup without any such thing having ever been proven would invite similar judgement of the current mentally incompetent bribee puppet in chief from other states and court appeals up to the Supreme Court. Given the current composition of the latter, it doesn’t look good for the demon rats.

    Trump appearing for the ridiculous mugshot was to his benefit, as AZ points out. As for your cryptic final sentence, I have no idea what it means. You’d have to translate it for me. I’ve tried plugging it into Google Translate, but alas, no avail. Maybe I’ll try running it past the wife, kids, dogs, and pigs, but I doubt they will know either.

  30. Why would the Russian Federation government confirm baseless AZ speculation? And what does it have to do with this case? Other than maybe the disproven Trump Russia collusion hoax being a bunch of malarkey that the derp state and fake news threw at Trump, much like this phony J6 collusion hoax, the ludicrous indictments, the much ado about Trump’s perfect phone calls with Ukrainian dictator Zelensky and Georgia election officials…the derp state feels very threatened by Trump, so they have to cook up one ridiculous plot after another to take him down, and every single one blows up in their dumbfounded faces. Beep beep!

  33. Republican Secretaries of State should declare Beijing Joe ineligible due to his active collusion with the Chinese Communist Party in their successful stealing of the 2020 US Presidential election. He’s also obviously guilty of taking bribes, being corrupt, treasonous, and being a hair sniffing chomo freak.

  35. It makes sense that someone who embraces the legacy of dictator Dzhugashvili is on the side that wants to make accusations tantamount to conviction and also wants to keep real opposition out of the election on trumped up charges. That’s exactly what the real Joseph Stalin would do.

  36. Supposing Republican SOS all kept Biden off the ballot and Demonrat SOS all kept Trump off the ballot how many electors would each have? Assume for a moment this were to hold up in court and that no other candidates get any electoral votes. In effect, secretaries of state would be the only ones voting for president. What would be the current electoral count? Are any up for election this year, and if so, are any of those elections looking likely to be close?

  42. The current SOS map is at ballotpedia showing 25 GOP – 22 Dumbass Rats. The elections are in KY, LA, and MS. I’ll guess those are all pretty solid GOP. It shows AK, HI and UT blank. Maybe a different title there. Let’s guess AK and UT as GOP, HI as D minus.

  43. Using those assumptions, and assuming DC dummy rot, 270 to win interactive map says it would be 270-268 for Trump. Close, but Trump wins. Under this formula Nebraska and Maine don’t get their separate district votes since SOS decides for the whole state.

    If it goes to Congress, Trump would win the one vote per state US house delegation vote. If it goes to Supreme Court, 6-3 GOP, Trump wins. Any way you look at it, Trump wins. No mulligans for dummy cretins from SOS, House, or Court short circuits. Check and mate!

  44. Ballotpedia link caused comment not to post, so anyone who wants to check my work will have to find the SOS map at ballotpedia him or herself.

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