[Politics] We’re already seeing how chaotic the 2024 election is going to be

[TheWild ™]

 

The 2024 presidential election year, which will be marked by simultaneous campaign and courtroom dramas, is off to a confusing and chaotic start.

The climax of a long primary campaign in which one current and one former Republican governor have emerged to challenge former President Donald Trump is complicated by serious questions about whether Trump will appear on primary ballots in every state.

After the US Supreme Court late last month agreed not to quickly rule on whether he has immunity from criminal prosecution, Trump now wants the court to fast-track the ballot question and ensure that voters have a right to see him on every ballot.

 

It’s a bizarre irony that the government is currently prosecuting Trump for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and disenfranchise voters while Trump is arguing that keeping him off the ballot in 2024 disenfranchises voters.

Trump remains on Colorado ballot for now

The first presidential primary contest – the Iowa caucuses – occurs in about 10 days and officially kicks off the monthslong, delegate-massing game by which candidates become a major party presidential candidate.

Trump, for now, remains on the Colorado primary ballot, even after the Colorado Supreme Court’s December ruling that he should be constitutionally ineligible for office under the 14th Amendment’s “insurrectionist ban.” The former president on Wednesday formally asked the US Supreme Court to overturn the Colorado ruling.

 

Trump similarly remains on the ballot in Maine, where the secretary of state has ruled Trump ineligible but an appeal is pending in state court.

There is also a challenge to Trump’s eligibility in Oregon. Illinois and Massachusetts became the latest states on Thursday as a liberal advocacy group, which frequently works with anti-Trump Republican voters, has tried to use state election rules to question Trump’s eligibility.

Other states, as CNN’s Marshall Cohen and Kristen Holmes reported, have rejected challenges to Trump’s qualification.

The Supreme Court already rejected one Trump-related, fast-track request. Special counsel Jack Smith had asked justices to quickly decide the validity of Trump’s claim that he should essentially be immune from prosecution for anything he did as president. Instead, justices will allow that argument, which is related to Trump’s federal prosecution for 2020 election interference, to percolate up through appeals courts.

The court’s rejection of Smith’s request increased the possibility that Trump’s slate of four separate criminal trials could be delayed. The federal election interference case currently has a trial date of March 4, the day before Super Tuesday, the biggest date on the presidential primary calendar.

Role reversal

Trump’s strategy is to delay his trials. His attorneys argued Thursday that Smith should be potentially be held in contempt of court for continuing to submit filings in the case while an appeals court considers Trump’s immunity claim.

Anyone used to the normal Republican argument that state governments should get more control over who can take part in their elections will be confused by Trump’s arguments in his own case that Congress should be in charge of who gets to appear on presidential primary ballots.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/04/politics/2024-election-campaigns-what-matters/index.html