The constitutional amendment that election officials in Colorado and Maine are relying on to block former President Donald Trump from the ballot is clear — and isn’t undemocratic, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) argued Sunday.
“Is it undemocratic that [former California Gov.] Arnold Schwarzenegger and [Energy Secretary] Jennifer Granholm can't run for president because they weren't born in the country? If you think about it, of all of the forms of disqualification that we have, the one that disqualifies people for engaging in insurrection is the most democratic because it's the one where people choose themselves to be disqualified,” Raskin, a former constitutional law professor, said Sunday during an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.” (Schwarzenegger was born in Austria, Granholm in Canada.)
“Donald Trump is in that tiny, tiny number of people who have essentially disqualified themselves,” he added.
Officials in Colorado and Maine have blocked Trump from the ballot in their states, on the grounds that he engaged in insurrection via his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and, thereby, is disqualified based on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
The backlash from Republicans — and some Democrats — has been swift and fierce, and the heated legal debate is expected to soon come before the Supreme Court.
“We have a number of disqualifications in the Constitution for serving as president,” Raskin pointed out Sunday. “For example, age. I mean, I've got a colleague who's a great young politician, Maxwell Frost, he's 26. He can't run for president. Now would we say that that's undemocratic? Well, that's the rules of the Constitution. If you don't like the rules of the Constitution, change the Constitution.”
