{"id":30680,"date":"2023-12-18T20:36:29","date_gmt":"2023-12-19T04:36:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=30680"},"modified":"2023-12-18T20:36:30","modified_gmt":"2023-12-19T04:36:30","slug":"why-california-is-fully-justified-in-keeping-trump-off-the-2024-ballot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2023\/12\/18\/why-california-is-fully-justified-in-keeping-trump-off-the-2024-ballot\/","title":{"rendered":"Why California is fully justified in keeping Trump off the 2024 ballot"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By\u00a0Joe Mathews<\/a> Dec 17, 2023 (SFChronicle.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Former President Donald Trump speaks at the California Republican Party convention on Sept. 29 in Anaheim. There are legal efforts in 28 states to keep Trump off ballots.Kyle Grillot\/Special to the Chronicle<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I thought we should keep Donald Trump\u2019s name on California\u2019s presidential ballot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Until I went to Berlin this fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At a conference on German election law, I met Gregor Hackmack, an entrepreneur so committed to democracy that he created a nonpartisan\u00a0online platform<\/a>\u00a0for direct dialogue between everyday people and elected representatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But now he\u2019s organizing a petition to ban Germany\u2019s second-most-popular political party \u2014 the far-right Alternative for Democracy, or AfD \u2014 from participation in politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hackmack is wrestling with one of democracy\u2019s hardest questions: When, if ever, can a democracy exclude anti-democratic politicians and parties from democratic elections?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The question is urgent because democracy worldwide is threatened by authoritarian leaders \u2014 in Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Egypt, Turkey and Tunisia \u2014 who won office through democratic elections.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blocking candidates from elections doesn\u2019t come naturally to democratically minded people. Nor should it \u2014 it\u2019s a despot move. Autocracies routinely maintain power by blocking opposition figures from standing for office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So why and how could we justify blocking candidates? One answer might be called the Democratic Self-Defense Exception: You should bar parties and politicians only when they threaten democracy itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The self-defense exception is the logic behind legal efforts by some Democrats and nonprofits to remove Trump from 2024 ballots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is also why it makes sense to examine how Germany, where the Nazi party took power through elections, reckons with those who threaten its democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Germany, AfD is the political party that poses a danger to democracy \u2014 and society. AfD partisans threaten democratically elected officials. One party leader expressed pride in Germany\u2019s World War II accomplishments.<\/a> The party embraces racist policies toward migrants, and it pledges mass deportation and cancelation of citizenship for minority groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet since its founding in 2013, AfD has secured support from one-third of voters in the country\u2019s economically marginalized east, and  21% of respondents in national polls<\/a>, the second highest level of support of any party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Germans like Hackmack argue for banning the party because such racism and anti-migrant policies violate the human rights provisions of the German Basic Law, the country\u2019s post-war governing document, which was developed with American assistance.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They also point to the Basic Law\u2019s Article 21<\/a>, which specifically provides for banning parties that do not \u201cconform to democratic principles,\u201d \u201cseek to undermine or abolish the free democratic basic order\u201d or \u201cendanger the existence of the Federal Republic of Germany.\u201d Germany\u2019s federal constitutional court gets the final say on banning a party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To those who suggest that banning the party is a political question best left to voters in future elections, German Institute of Human Rights Director Beate Rudolf, a ban supporter, writes: \u201cGerman history in particular has shown that the free democratic basic order of a state can be destroyed if positions of contempt for humanity do not meet with energetic opposition in good time and are thus able to spread and gain acceptance.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ban supporters \u2014 including members of the country\u2019s center-right party, the CDU \u2014 have gathered more than 400,000 signatures<\/a> on a petition demanding the parties and national parliament ask the constitutional court to ban the party. Still, it\u2019s unclear whether the petition will succeed; it\u2019s been decades since the court banned a party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here in the U.S., there has been no such popular organizing to keep Trump off the ballot \u2014 despite the threat he poses to democracy. Instead, the campaign has been legal, with court challenges in 28 states designed to keep Trump off ballots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These cases are grounded in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which excludes from future office any person who has taken an oath to support the Constitution and then rebelled against it, either through insurrection or by giving \u201caid and comfort\u201d to the Constitution\u2019s enemies. Trump\u2019s actions \u2014 his efforts to overturn the election, the Jan. 6 insurrection and his promises to violate the Constitution if he returns to office \u2014 all satisfy this criteria for ineligibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump\u2019s conservative critics are pushing hardest<\/a> to boot him from the ballot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA president who tried to use force and fraud to stay in power after losing an election should not be allowed to wield the power of office ever again,\u201d writes George Mason law professor Ilya Somin<\/a>. \u201cAnd we need not and should not rely on the democratic process alone to combat such dangers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the litigation hasn\u2019t gotten much traction in the courts, or political support, even from Trump critics. In California, state officials have taken no visible steps to block him from the March 2024 ballot before a Dec. 28 deadline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump argues, falsely, that taking him off the ballot would violate his rights for voting or free speech. But democracy grants no inherent right to be president. What citizens of democracies do have \u2014 as I was reminded in Berlin \u2014 is a responsibility to protect democracy by excluding those who won\u2019t abide by its rules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joe Mathews is a columnist and democracy editor for Z\u00f3calo Public Square.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dec 17, 2023<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Joe Mathews<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joe Mathews is Connecting California columnist and California editor at Z\u00f3calo Public Square, an Ideas Exchange that is a project of New America and Arizona State University.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Joe Mathews Dec 17, 2023 (SFChronicle.com) I thought we should keep Donald Trump\u2019s name on California\u2019s presidential ballot. Until I went to Berlin this fall. At a conference on German election law, I met Gregor Hackmack, an entrepreneur so committed to democracy that he created a nonpartisan\u00a0online platform\u00a0for direct dialogue… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1104],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30680"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30680"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30684,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30680\/revisions\/30684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}