Trump’s appeals on ballot access raise existential constitutional arguments

CNN —

Ex-President Donald Trump is one of America’s most frivolous litigants, whose suits over business disputes and false claims of voter fraud often failed the laugh test.

But the twin appeals Trump has now filed after being thrown off the ballot in Colorado and Maine do not fit into his normal pattern of using the law to delay and disrupt moments of personal accountability. These efforts might be self-serving and brought on by his own anti-democratic conduct in 2020. But they are also rare examples of the ex-president raising a vital constitutional issue that urgently needs to be resolved. Trump has appealed to the US Supreme Court on the Colorado matter and to a state court in Maine. Ultimately, if the high court fails to settle the issue for the whole country, the 2024 election could descend into chaos.

Trump is challenging decisions by the Colorado Supreme Court and Maine’s Democratic secretary of state to disqualify him under the 14th Amendment’s ban on “insurrectionists” in the wake of his supporters’ mob attack on Congress that followed his campaign to overturn the 2020 election.

In his petition to the Supreme Court on Wednesday on the Colorado matter, Trump argued that he did not take part in an insurrection; that his eligibility should be determined by Congress, not the courts; and that the insurrectionist ban did not apply to the presidency in any case. In an earlier filing to the top bench, the Colorado Republican Party, which is also a party in the case, had warned of “catastrophic” national consequences if the state Supreme Court ruling was allowed to stand because it would lead to endless nationwide disputes about the eligibility of candidates and could lead to “nebulous” insurrection claims. In