Arizona Secretary of State Could Have Trump Removed from Ballot by December
CORRECTION, Sept. 1, 2023: Adrian Fontes is Arizona’s secretary of state. The original headline of this article gave him a different title. We apologize to Mr. Fontes and our readers for the error.
Another state official says he’s looking into the question of whether former President Donald Trump can constitutionally appear on the ballot for the 2024 presidential election.
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said that he expects that question to “end up in court” and was working to determine how to handle complaints about Trump’s presence on the ballot in the meantime.
A Democrat elected to the secretary of state position in 2022 after serving as the recorder for Maricopa County from 2017 to 2021, Fontes told NBC News that his office was taking the issue “very seriously.”
“We have to have a final certification of eligible candidates [for the primary ballot] by Dec. 14 for Arizona’s presidential preference election,” Fonte told NBC.
“And because this will ultimately end up in court,” he predicted, “we are taking this very seriously.”
Some will argue, as former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson alluded to in last week’s Republican presidential primary debate, that Trump is barred by the 14th Amendment from ever holding federal office again.
Originally intended to keep former Confederate officials out of the federal government after the Civil War, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment disqualifies from public office any individual who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” the Constitution. The Amendment was ratified in 1868.
Conservative legal scholars William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen argued in a paper scheduled for publication in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review that Trump should, in fact, be disqualified from holding the presidency again.
In addition to the Arizona inquiry, the Attorney General’s Office of New Hampshire is “carefully reviewing” the question of whether the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution could keep former President Donald Trump off the state’s ballots next year.
According to a joint statement from New Hampshire’s Attorney General John Formella and Secretary of State David Scanlan, no decision has been made regarding the question of Trump’s alleged involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol incursion, and neither office is arguing that Trump’s actions on that day should or should not preclude him from being elected president again.
The joint statement said that the state AG’s office was “reviewing the legal issues involved” at the request of the secretary of state’s office.
Unlike Fontes, both Formella and Scanlan are Republicans.
News of the article by Baude and Paulsen apparently prompted talk show host Charlie Kirk to tell listeners that New Hampshire officials were working to keep Trump off the ballot, NBC News reported separately.
Scanlan denied that claim, telling NBC that he was “not seeking to remove any names from the presidential primary ballot, and I have not said that I am seeking to remove any names from the presidential primary ballot.”
He said that his request for “appropriate legal input” from the AG’s office was so that “when the time comes to make a decision on those challenges, to qualifications, that I can respond appropriately with the facts.”
New Hampshire GOP Chairman Chris Ager appeared on Kirk’s show Monday, the same day Kirk told listeners to call the state election administration office, and said that the whole matter was a non-issue.
“I’ve talked to the secretary of state,” Ager told Kirk. “I’ve talked to the attorney general. I am very confident that all of the 14 current candidates who apply will be on our ballot.”
In a separate statement, Ager said, “I have confidence in our secretary of state and attorney general to make the right decisions.”
The full text of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment appears here:
Section 3.
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
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