By Will Cornelius

The Surveyor

On Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2023, Colorado’s Supreme Court issued a split decision ruling that could remove former President Donald Trump from the 2024 presidential ballot in the state.

In a 4-3 decision, the judges held that Trump is disqualified from serving as President under Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment, known as the Disqualification Clause and thus must be removed from the Republican presidential primary on March 5 and presumably the general presidential election in November 2024. All seven justices are Democrats appointed by Democrat governors. Four attended Ivy League colleges and the three that voted against the measure are graduates of the Denver University College of Law.

The news sent shockwaves across the state, nation and world as the likely 2024 GOP presidential nominee became the first former president ever disqualified from the nation’s highest office.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) along with six Colorado voters brought the lawsuit in September. In November, a Denver state court judge ruled that while Trump did indeed engage in insurrection, the Disqualification Clause does not apply. Both sides then appealed to Colorado’s Supreme Court.

While a momentous moment, the ruling only applies to Colorado, where President Joe Biden won by 14 percentage points in 2020 over Trump. CREW has been involved in similar lawsuits in Minnesota and Michigan that have so far failed to disqualify Trump.

So, in Colorado, you can smoke pot, take magic mushrooms, ride a motorcycle without a helmet and now run around with wolves in the wild. But it seems voting for Trump in 2024 crosses the line and is too dangerous?!

Love him or not—and I’m in the latter—you have a right to vote, or just as importantly, not vote for him in 2024. Colorado’s highest court has taken away a political right of every Coloradan by removing Trump from the ballot.

Not making the ballot in the U.S. historically meant a candidate failed to meet a signature threshold that has never deterred any real political force. It was typically a sign of poor support and signaled irrelevance. Now it could become just another political cudgel we regularly bludgeon each other to death with.

A lot of the debate revolves around this being a political issue that voters in the country are more than equipped to handle every election. That is true, however, it is also worth mentioning the double standard applied to Trump in this case too.

“Our government cannot deprive someone of the right to hold public office without due process of law,” Justice Carlos Samour wrote in dissent. “Even if we are convinced that a candidate committed horrible acts in the past—dare I say, engaged in insurrection—there must be procedural due process before we can declare that individual disqualified from holding public office. Procedural due process is one of the aspects of America’s democracy that sets this country apart.”

Samour chastised “makeshift proceedings” by the lower district court “which lacked basic discovery, the ability to subpoena documents and compel witnesses, workable timetables to adequately investigate and develop defenses, and the opportunity for a fair trial.”

Trump remains free of any criminal conviction, sure plenty of charges and indictments, but nothing has stuck on Teflon Don yet.

The increasing politicization of institutes in the U.S. is leading to a tit-for-tat arms race to attack political opponents in any avenue at every opportunity. What if Texas decided to remove Biden from their state’s 2024 presidential ballot because his ‘weak border policies’ demonstrate he engaged in insurrection?

What if Colorado keeps Trump off the ballot because he is ‘disqualified’ from being president and then he wins the electoral college in 2024? Would Colorado have to defer to Biden as President of Colorado until 2028?

This myopic ruling will end up in the hands of the Supreme Court of the United States soon, where they should rectify Colorado’s mistake and let people vote for whoever they want for president. That’s as long as they’re 35 years old, a natural-born citizen, have lived in the U.S. for 14 years—and of course—have never been convicted of insurrection!