Austin Sarat in The Hill:
Moreover, in a 2022 CNN poll, “about half of Americans, 48%,” said “they think it is at least somewhat likely that in the next few years, some elected officials will successfully overturn the results of a US election because their party did not win.”
That is why the Supreme Court should grant the request made by six of the plaintiffs in the Colorado case to fast-track its review of their state’s supreme court ruling, “to reduce voter confusion and ensure that primary voters cast their vote knowing whether Trump is disqualified from the Presidency.” …
The differences between Democrat Bellows and the Colorado Republican Party on such fundamental matters are further reasons why Americans might think that the Trump disqualification issue is just another skirmish in a highly polarized political environment. Or, as the Trump campaign alleged in the wake of Bellows’s decision, that “We are witnessing, in real-time, the attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter.”
As Professor Richard Hasen recently observed, “The pressure to disqualify Trump is only going to grow until there’s a final resolution of the question.” Only a Supreme Court decision can alleviate that pressure and put to rest the radically divergent views about the meaning and application of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
What former Supreme Justice Robert Jackson said 70 years ago about the court as a whole is particularly applicable in the Trump disqualification cases: “We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final.”
Only the court’s final decision can let election officials like Bellows and Weber get out of the limelight and back to the important work of running our elections.