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Progressive organizations Our Revolution and Free Speech for People are encouraging elections officials in 10 states to deem current and former lawmakers involved in the January 6 Capitol attack as insurrectionists that are unfit to serve in office ever again, per rules set in the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
The organizations sent letters to secretaries of state in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Ohio, Oregon and Pennsylvania. They’re also encouraging residents of those states to sign petitions demanding that lawmakers who sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election results be barred from running again.
Some of the letters and petitions name specific federal lawmakers that the organizations want to see banned from running for office — in their letter to Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, for example, the organizations say that Republican Rep. Jim Jordan should be subject to the constitutional provision barring insurrectionists from office. In Georgia, the letter asks Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) to prevent Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) from running.
All of the letters, however, mention one singular person who should be barred from seeking office in the future: former President Donald Trump.
“Trump is preparing to run for president again in 2024,” one of the letters says. “However, due to his incitement of the January 6th insurrection, Trump is constitutionally ineligible for any future run for office.”
“We call on you to use this Constitutional provision to ban insurrectionists from the ballot just as you routinely exercise your authority to ban candidates who do not meet age or residency requirements,” another letter states, adding that Trump and other election officials “violated their oath of office to subvert the 2020 elections and allow mob rule to block a peaceful transfer of power on January 6th.”
“There must be concrete consequences for these Constitutional oathbreakers,” the letter concludes.
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment forbids former lawmakers who have previously taken an oath to support the Constitution from being able to serve in office or in government again, if they’ve “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the U.S. Although this provision was primarily used after the Civil War to block former Confederates from holding office, there have been a number of attempts to resurrect the provision to ensure that those who sought to overturn the 2020 race cannot run for office in 2022 and beyond.
Those efforts have failed so far, although a ruling on Greene’s eligibility has been appealed.
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