He can, because there's no law against it. Probably nobody thought there'd ever need to be!
As an outsider that’s pretty wild. So you can’t buy a firearm but you can be president and control them all. Like what?
Actually the thought is if the government can just imprison you to stop your candidacy, they have too much power.
Thus they can continue to run.
I would say just don’t break any laws then, but laws can change and people are terrible.
Edit: Pretty sure you’re all downvoting a misunderstanding.
I’m saying I get why it’s a thing because people would convict their opponents. Not that I was actually saying well don’t break any laws.
Sure, but a corrupt government can fabricate evidence to keep their enemies silenced.
Look at Russia and their treatment of Alexei Navalny.
Or just regular ass black people in America.
Remember, there is a mechanism that prevents criminals from winning elections and holding offices, it's the one that's the best one in a democracy. The voters.
It's not good to give governments the power to decide who does and doesn't deserve to hold authority, it is good to let voters decide if someone's crimes are relevant to the election.
Sadly, it seems many Americans do not agree with me that trump is not suitable for office. Hopefully enough do that they decide not to vote for him
We've got these things called "social media" that are built expressly for the purpose of influencing people to buy more stuff (literally in the name: influencers). And if it can get people to part with their money, you can be sure the same tools can be used to get people to vote against their own interests.
We thought the internet was a tool to spread democracy. We were wrong. The Internet is a tool used to undermine democracy, so long as people using the Internet are not strongly inoculated against organized interests, foreign, and domestic.
The concern of the founding fathers was that one state would have political reasons to rush a trial and get a legitimate candidate convicted of a crime in their court. If the conviction was legitimate, it was supposed to be handled by the Electors of the Electoral College.
If the conviction is legitimate, the Electoral College has ways to shut that down.
Our lack of laws around the POTUS are a glaring. It's insane that a judge can preside over a case where the defendant is a former president who appointed them. Like Judge Cannon and 3 members of the SCOTUS.
Don't forget, it's not like he has a right to the presidency. The president is voted in. So technically speaking the people decide if the felonies make a difference or not
My man Eugen Debbs ran from prison in the early 1900s. He was thrown in prison for speaking out again the war (the first amendment wasn’t much protection back in the day).
It is good that he could run, since he was a political prisoner. He advocated for the common man against the corrupt institutions.
Agreed. There are situations where it totally makes sense to have a felon run for president. This isn’t one of them
But the kicker is that he isn’t allowed to vote right? New York restore voting rights after you have completed your sentence if I remember correctly.
He's a Florida resident now, but I believe they also take away the right to vote for felons until their sentence is complete.
Florida… HAHAHAHA, this is effin’ to good to be true… in Florida you risk lose your voting rights FOREVER!!!!
Keep in mind that the founding fathers were guilty of what would have been considered a lot of grave crimes by England, which was formerly the jurisdiction that applied to them.
So they probably wouldn't have had a huge appetite for blocking political rights of criminals given their recent standing.
I find it wild that a felon loses their right to vote, but they could run for office. So he could run for president, but he can't vote for himself. 🤨
If a convicted felon loses their right to vote, they should not be allowed to run for president.
You'd think the bad publicity alone would be enough to destroy any chance of election. You'd think.
Yeah, one would really think
But his supporters don't do any such thing as "thinking."
Yes, and it's important that felons be able to run for president. Were that not the case, a corrupt enough system could just disqualify anyone that would seek to oust it.
This is true.
But, it must also be pointed out that that's another case of good faith actors getting fucked by assholes. In theory this sounds good, like free speech and tolerance for all. But when you are dealing with criminals and sociopaths those virtues get used against you.
Absolutely, and it's infuriating. The only thing that can stand between criminals and sociopaths is the vote, and a too much of the vote is controlled by morons.
Yup! Because that's the law. The original idea was to keep people in power from being able to outmaneuver their opponents by having them arrested. That was back when politicians and corporations had some level of public accountability though.
So felons can run for president, they just can't vote for who they want though?
Debs ran from prison (for the high crime of telling people that WWI was none of our business and people shouldn't enlist to get turned toa pink mist in Belgium) in 1920
As for voting as a felon, that varies state to state. I don't think there's anyplace that allows people to vote from prison, but quite a few states let convicted felons vote once they've completed their sentence and any parole that follows it (and in some states, pay additional fines, which sounds a bit like a poll tax to me, but I'm not one of our nine kritarchs, so what do I know about that sort of thing?)
As for people running for office when they couldn't vote, Elizabeth Cady Stanton ran for office well before she could have voted, and the first woman elected to Congress (Jeanette Rankin) was elected in 1916, several years before women's suffrage was added to the constitution, though her state, Montana, had allowed women to vote already.
The Constitution spells out who is eligible to run for President, and does not say criminals are ineligible. It's as simple as that.
I do find it odd that you guys put so much emphasis on a document written in a time nothing like today.
Like surely it should evolve, but I can see how that would go right now so it’s probably for the best.
We do amend the Constitution from time to time, but it takes a 2/3 vote in both houses of Congress, plus ratification by 3/4 of states. so it's quite a high bar.
Just because an idea is old, doesn't mean its a bad idea. And we do have mechanisms for modifying the constitution. We just don't do it often because it requires a lot of agreement.
I think we have more enlightened and more informed views now than 270 years ago is alls I’m saying.
Just the right to bare arms is such an example. Weapons are completely different these days.
I exercise the right to bare arms as often as possible, and my farmer's tan is proof of that.
Yeah it's because Americans are fucking terrible at governing.
The vast, vast majority of Americans do not care about their elected officials. Most do not even know who they are, and just vote based on party affiliation or don't vote at all. Our government structure also fundamentally doesn't work, and we would be far better served adopting a parliamentary system like the rest of the developed world, but nobody cares enough to do anything. Our courts are corrupt thanks to Donald Trump, gerrymandering means our elections are hardly fair, the list goes on.
America has an apathetic government that accomplishes very little and is easily captured by hostile forces because it is exactly the level of government Americans are willing to put in the effort for.
Yep, cause the constitution doesn’t forbid felons from running for president.
The congress can still impeach Trump for a third time even though he's not in office, and if the Senate convicts, they can ban him from ever holding public office again.
I'll take things that'll never happen for $100
Yes. And he's not the first to run a campaign from prison (though he likely won't go to prison for the 34 felonies. Prison is extremely rare for those kinds of charges. even if he wasn't trump.)
Cohen did time for the exact same crime
This is incorrect.
Cohen plead guilty to tax evasion and campaign finance violations
Trump was found guilty of falsifying business records
Not only is the substance of the charge different, Cohen's crimes were federal where Trump's conviction is state.
the charges that trump is guilty of, the sentencing very, very rarely includes prison time. (because we live in a fucked up country where you can get away with anything as long as you're a business.)
yes, felons can campaign for president and be elected. technically it's even legal for the president to be locked behind bars while serving.
The sad part is that despite being a convicted felon he will most likely never see the inside of a jail cell.
Yes. The constitution is actually shockingly specific about what the qualifications are. Article II, Section 1, Clause 5:
No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
No other qualifications can be considered, barring a Constitutional Amendment.
The current record for number of US presidental votes received while in prison is about 1,000,000. Eugene V. Debs is the record holder, and that election was in 1920. Trump just may beat him this year. There is no law that says you can't be president while in prison.
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