Ugh. This is only going to backfire and feed the tHe DeEp StAtE Is OuT tO gEt Me narrative.

Let's never do the right thing because Republicans might whine about it.

No matter what happens Trump will trumpet "the deep state is rigging things against me".

To me, it's a nothing that he does this. His followers already believe this regardless of what happens. Everyone else knows what happened J6.

So what is there to fear following the law? His supporters won't get less violent or treasonous.

Nowhere is conviction required here. In the past when this rule has been used a conviction was not required.

Stop pretending it says a conviction is required or even mentioned.

Ugh. Doing the right and lawful thing is hard. We should just not do it.

No one who has been formally disqualified under Section 3 was charged under the criminal “rebellion or insurrection” statute (18 U.S.C. § 2383) or its predecessors so why would Trump need to be?

The Constitution doesn't say you have to be convicted of insurrection for the 14th amendment to apply. I don't like the idea that you can't do the right thing just because the psychos will freak out about it.

Sounds to me like the Maine Secretary of State followed and upheld the law and when faced with what we all know is overwhelming evidence against Trump she made the only possible call. Those arguing that this was poor strategy, would also be counter-arguing for following the rule of law.

We need more people like the Maine and Georgia Secretaries of State. They are doing their job in a bipartisan and by-the-book process and they are not being intimidated by the threats of violence against them and their staff. These are the real protectors of Democracy that you want even outside of these insane conditions we have been forced to face.

its definitely gonna feed tHe DeEp StAtE Is OuT tO gEt Me narrative... but if it rains on the day of the American elections, its going to do the same thing...

And there will be attempts in Republican states with Republican officials to remove Biden from their ballots as a sort of "Well, if you do that to us then we'll do the same thing to you." They're trying to discredit the idea that Trump did anything wrong and make it all seem like this is all just political games. I'm kind of curious where it goes in situations like that, I'd assume all the way up to the Supreme Court if necessary. There's the one issue of whether Colorado and other states can bar Trump from the ballot, but then I imagine there may be separate cases brought by Republicans about whether they can manufacture reasons to bar Biden from the ballot.

I've considered this too. My suspicion is that they'll appeal at the 11th hour, giving little time to amend the ballots.

quit pretending there's anything we can do to get republicans to act in good faith. they'll use whatever levers of power they can regardless of what we do. it's time to start using whatever power we can to defend democracy from its openly declared enemies, and to stop running our defense plans past the enemy for their approval first.