Some legal scholars are arguing that secretaries of state should remove Donald Trump from the 2024 presidential ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which states that a public official is ineligible for public office if he has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” America. But Georgia law contemplates a legal process that must take place before anyone is removed from the ballot. Anyone who believes in democracy must let the voters decide….
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. Since our founding, Americans have believed that a government is just when it has earned the consent of the governed. Taking away the ability to choose—or object to—the eligibility of candidates eliminates that consent for slightly less than half of the country.