MY RESPONSE TO A FOLLOWER ON TWITTER ABOUT THE SECTION 3 BALLOT CHALLENGES

Here are two tweets by a follower of mine on Twitter:

“This is all theater and bad politics. If the Democratic Party thinks that going to court to prevent people from being able to vote for somebody is a good idea, they should look at the backlash at the GOP effort to suppress the vote.”

“Republicans want to restrict who can vote, democrats want to restrict who people can vote for. Both ways are undemocratic and both are bad politics.”

My thread responding to these points:

Challengers are invoking Section 3 of the 14th amendment, which plainly states that anyone guilty of insurrection (think Cawthorn and Marjorie Taylor Greene) are ineligible to hold any federal office.

So the issue before the courts is most decidedly not “theater,” whatever that might mean.

The insurrectionist members of Congress like Cawthorn and Greene sought through their words and actions to nullify my vote for Biden, by acting to maintain Trump in the White House, even though he had, by law, undoubtedly lost the election. (Even Barr said so.)

Should they be allowed to run for reelection in 2022?

Of course not.

Having taken the oath to support the constitution, they have run afoul of the plain meaning of Section 3. Allowing them on the ballot for a federal office would be an offense against federal election law.

76% of Republicans might think that Greene and Cawthorn are “patriots,” and that they have the right to vote for them and other members of Congress who violated their oaths of office by engaging in insurrection. But under Section 3 they do not have that right.

Nor should they have that right.

“Republicans want to restrict who can vote, democrats want to restrict who people can vote for” is a false equivalence. Democrats want to protect the right to vote, whereas Republicans are, in effect, asserting the right of Cawthorn and Greene to nullify my vote and yet remain in office.

Nor is it bad politics (for Democrats). Republicans are worried sick about the fallout from these legal cases as they move forward, just as they are having panic attacks about the January 6 committee and its planned hearings in June.

All bad politics — for Republicans, not Democrats.