OPINION:
Bad news for the Democratic strategists scheming to have President Biden win re-election by default. All nine Supreme Court justices on Monday rejected the notion that state courts have the right to select which candidates for federal office are worthy of appearing on the ballot.
This had been a central premise in the left’s “lawfare” attack on former President Donald Trump. Their conspiracy began with a concerted effort to falsely label the unruly Jan. 6 Capitol protest as an “insurrection” with the ultimate intention of applying Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment — the Insurrection Clause — to disqualify Mr. Trump.
Such a novel legal interpretation would have had an impact on our system of government unlike anything seen in the nation’s 247-year history. Law professors from around the country lined up to endorse the legitimacy of the unprecedented ballot-exclusion hypothesis. They filed amicus briefs and made round-the-clock media appearances to promote cases that were strategically filed in sympathetic liberal jurisdictions where a positive outcome was all but assured.
These accomplished counselors from prestigious university law schools proclaimed their cause was “saving democracy,” but their chicanery was undemocratic at heart. Consider what happened in a downtown Chicago courtroom last week as Judge Tracie Porter — a jurist who “presides over minor traffic violations” and has spent barely 2 years on the bench — decided she would order any ballot cast for Mr. Trump in Illinois to be destroyed.
This is the absurd outcome that the U.S. Supreme Court sought to head off as it overturned the ballot exclusion order issued by Colorado’s highest court, finding it’s up to the most politically accountable branch of government — Congress — to deal with such matters.
The federal justices worried about the disarray that would happen if each of the 50 states set up their own processes to decide federal elections through a court system that would likely not resolve issues before Election Day.
“The disruption would be all the more acute — and could nullify the votes of millions and change the election result — if Section 3 enforcement were attempted after the Nation has voted,” wrote the nine justices.
The court’s three liberals and Justice Amy Coney Barret agreed with the overall conclusion, but they disagreed with how hard the majority slammed the door on future attempts by states to interfere with national elections. “Particularly in this circumstance, writings on the Court should turn the national temperature down, not up,” Justice Barrett explained.
But that is precisely what Monday’s decision has done, foreclosing the prospect of widespread disenfranchisement at the hands of partisan judicial actors acting on advice from unscrupulous legal hucksters who would have sent the United States down a very dark road.
Of course, the legal battles are far from over. Leaving nothing to chance, Democratic activists have used the courts to besiege the leading Republican Party candidate in the hopes of draining attention and resources throughout the election. The high court’s latest intervention gives reason to hope the rest of this ongoing legal insurrection will also be put down.
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