This is the first. Do not expect it to be the last.
A group of voters in Colorado filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking to keep former President Donald Trump off the ballot in the state, arguing he is disqualified from holding public office under a rarely used provision of the 14th Amendment.
The suit was filed in state court in Denver by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) on behalf of six Republican and unaffiliated voters who are challenging Trump's listing as a candidate on the 2024 Republican presidential primary ballot and any future ballot.
On the one hand, hey, it's Colorado. It's not like Trump was going to win in Colorado anyway. Democrats there tend to win by Rocky Mountain-high margins. The GOP doesn't really sweat the state that hard.
Moreover, this sort of thing seems unlikely to succeed. Yes, Democrats are obsessed with invoking the 14th Amendment's "insurrection clause" to scuttle Trump's 2024 chances. They think that Trump's involvement in the Jan. 6 riot qualifies under those provisions. It's the longest of long shots, an obscure and desperate constitutional Hail Mary that is pretty much guaranteed to fail.
Then again, as CBS notes, this idea is "gaining traction." Prominent Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine — hardly a fringe conspiracy theorist, at least on paper — has proposed it. The discussion around the idea is increasingly taking on mainstream status.
It seems just completely unlikely that it's going to work, but it also seems like it's growing in popularity:
"We have been thinking about this in my office for quite some time, before the start of the year, assuming that this will play out," Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said in an interview.
Underscoring the seriousness with which she has been treating the topic, Griswold noted that "there have been conversations among secretaries" about it.
Who knows? It's a long way from here to next November.
That's time for a lot of lawsuits, both reasonable and outrageous.
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