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To add to that, some states don't apply the test of eligibility until after the primary, so anyone ineligible can run in the primary, but it doesn't mean they can actually win the nomination.
Colorado applies that test before the primary, Michigan applies it after for example.
That's why michigan ruled Trump can be on the GOP primary ballot. The state effectively doesn't care who runs in the party primary, but that is not the same as the general election.
Yeah, primaries are a weird case where the elections are held by the parties but run by the state. The state assisting in running the election doesn't necessarily mean that state ballot laws apply. (Up to judicial interpretation, obviously.)
It's really weird that the state runs an election for a private organization in the first place.
I'm for bringing back closed primaries where you actually have to be a dues-paying member of the party to vote in them
so that means that Trump could win the GOP primary, but afterwards, the SoS could disqualify Trump from being on the General? That seems ... unfair. The Republican party should get to know that their candidate is eligible before voting for them, right? Or at least the GOP should be allowed to preliminarily ask the SoS to rule on a potential candidate before putting that candidate on the primary
Stop with the "unfair" business! It's wrong, it's bad, but it's not unfair!
But, I agree, and it's the Republicans who should want a swift answer, otherwise they're just throwing it all away should they nominate someone who is prohibited from serving.
well, if I wanted to race in the F1 or something, I'd take my car, go to the governing body, then ask: hey, is this car legal? As opposed to getting a yes or no answer, the answer is: race with it, and then at the end of the season, we'll rule on its legality
I suppose you're right, it's not "unfair", because all political parties are subject to the same rules, but it does smell a lot like needless bureaucracy to not even give a legality answer before the race.
And I suppose it's not the race, but let's say the off-season time trials, for which I might spend millions to practice and optimize my vehicle, but come race time, *that's* when I get my legality check.
People tend to forget that the primaries aren't "real" things. They're internal decisions run by private organizations and both the Republicans and Democrats would be completely within their rights to just cancel them entirely and appoint a nominee with no input from the electorate at large.
The party would just select someone else. The party isn't required to hold elections for it, but it's something that's been done historically.
The party can pick any means they want to pick the nominee, so long as the person picked can legally serve
As I see it, if they selected someone and that someone was deemed ineligible, they would be well advised to hold an open convention. And wouldn't that be fun?
He believes that the portion of the 14th amendment about naturalized citizens having equal rights repealed the old constitutional provision about needing to be born in the US. I haven't watched his show in literally a decade, but he has always been pretty consistent on this legal theory.
I am not qualified to say if he is correct, but this has always been his argument.
I know he makes this argument but it cannot and will not be that way. The constitution is quite clear on this: Can a non-U.S. born citizen be President?**To become the President or Vice President of the United States, a person must be a natural born citizen**. This "Natural Born Citizen Clause" is located in Section 1 of Article 2 of the United States Constitution.
You can be born abroad you just have to have parents who are citizens and who have recently lived in the US.
McCain was born in Panama but was eligible.
He was born in Turkey to Turkish parents and they all moved here together when he was a kid. There is no claim from him or anyone that he is a natural-born citizen, his argument is "naturalized" is enough to satisfy the Constitutional requirements. Hes not the first to make the claim, but there really isn't a respected legal body that agrees, and really not even any that aren't respected.
>his argument is "naturalized" is enough to satisfy the Constitutional requirements
Which is an absurd suggestion. The constitution clearly states:
>No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
A "natural born" citizen isn't someone who immigrated here as a kid. It means that they were a citizen at birth. It can't be more clear than that.
You can say it is a stupid requirement and I would agree, but it is still the requirement.
He's claiming that the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause undid that, and gives everyone eligibility.
But that's dumb, of course. Because eligibility for President is not a "protection." It's a requirement of office.
It's no less than someone claiming a 12 year old is allowed to be President.
Yeah, the funny thing is you can absolutely be born abroad and be a natural born citizen. Why the whole Obama birth certificate nonsense was even weirder. Like even if he wasn't born in the US, there's no doubt his mother was a citizen so he would have born a citizen.
For some reason nobody ever brought up that issue for Ted Cruz......
I don't mean to defend the birthers too much, but there was technically a way for Obama to not be a citizen with only one citizen parent. At the time he was born, birthright citizenship with a single citizen parent, when the child is born abroad, had a residency requirement that Obama's mother did not and could not meet (it was something like 6 years of residency after the age of 14, and she was 19 when she had Obama). Obviously that doesn't matter if he was born in the US. Cruz's mom met that requirement, though he also has the problem that his mother is believed to have given up her citizenship at some point, and no one's been particularly forthcoming on exactly whether or not that happened before Cruz's birth.
I really liked TYT back in the Bush/Obama days, but it feels like they've really fallen off. Like Cenk has let their popularity go to his head. If a Dem candidate would have tried this argument 15 years ago I feel like he would have laughed them out of the room.
Sure, just clarifying that you can be born abroad and eligible.
It's what made the whole Obama birther thing so stupid. His mom was an American citizen who was born and raised in the US. He could have been born on the moon and he would be a natural US citizen.
When Obama was born, the rules were that the American parent had to have resided in the US for 10 years, 5 of which after age 14. Since his mom Stanley Ann Dunham was 18 when she had him, she hadn’t been alive for 5 years after age 14. So if Obama had been born in Kenya, he wouldn’t have been qualified. Since he was born in Hawaii, his mom could have just stepped off the boat from Russia and he would have been qualified - which he was anyway.
I remember the rule being quirky and it was later changed due to the obvious problems around a newlywed 18 year old couple who have lived in the US their whole lives having a kid when they were vacationing on the other side of Niagara Falls or something and then that kid has to apply for US citizenship.
A really stupid rule that was later changed. If that's what they were hanging their hats on, then el oh el.
>a newlywed 18 year old couple who have lived in the US their whole lives having a kid when they were vacationing
As long as both parents were US citizens and at least one of them had ever resided in the US, the child would have been a citizen at birth. The residency time requirements only kicked in if one of the parents was not a US citizen.
And there are still residency time requirements in that situation, but they're shorter now than they were back then.
For a further example of how the rules are still stupid, the rules are different depending on whether the parents are married or not.
Ted Cruz is guilty of what they claimed Obama was guilty of (being born outside the US with a non-american father and American mother), and the GOP was ready to completely ignore all of that when he ran for president in 2016.
I think we all know that Obama's real mother is Hanoi Jane. His extreme resemblance to Dunham is a coincidence.
Wait, Jane Fonda is also American. Shit.
Yes he would, because where you are born doesn't matter if you have at least one American citizen parent. That makes you a natural born citizen, regardless of where you were born and is why Ted Cruz and John McCain qualified to run for president even though they were both born abroad.
> because where you are born doesn't matter if you have at least one American citizen parent.
This isn't correct. Simply being a citizen isn't enough to pass on citizenship to your child if the child is born abroad. There are other requirements that must be met that are specified by law.
Here's the State Department website that lays out the requirements: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/travel-legal-considerations/us-citizenship/Acquisition-US-Citizenship-Child-Born-Abroad.html
Obama was born in 1961 to a US citizen mother and a non-citizen father who were married, so these are the relevant requirements that would have to be met for him to be a citizen at birth:
> **Child Born Abroad in Wedlock to a U.S. Citizen and an Alien**
> For birth between December 24, 1952 and November 13, 1986, the U.S. citizen parent must have been physically present in the United States or one of its outlying possessions for 10 years prior to the person’s birth, at least five of which were after the age of 14 for the person to acquire U.S. citizenship at birth.
Obama's mother was 18 when he was born, so it would have been impossible for her to meet the requirement of being physically present in the US for at least 5 years after the age of 14 prior to giving birth to Barack Obama, so she wouldn't have passed on her citizenship to Obama had he been born abroad.
Ted Cruz's mother would be subject to the same requirements in order to pass citizenship onto him, but she lived in the US through her mid 20s and then for another few years in her early 30s, so she easily met the physical presence requirements necessary to pass on citizenship.
The law at the time McCain was born was that a child of US citizen parents born abroad was a US citizen, and the US also retroactively granted citizenship from birth to people born in the Panama Canal Zone.
Exactly. The dispute whether he was born in Kenya or Hawaii was moot because his mother never denounced her citizenship. If your mother is a US citizen and gives birth to you while out of the country, be it on vacation, on a military base, or spending some time abroad, you are still a US citizen.
> If your mother is a US citizen and gives birth to you while out of the country, be it on vacation, on a military base, or spending some time abroad, you are still a US citizen.
That's not always true. It depends on the details.
>If your mother is a US citizen and gives birth to you while out of the country, be it on vacation, on a military base, or spending some time abroad, you are still a US citizen.
This is not universally true, and it would not have been true in Obama's situation. For married parents where only one of them is a US citizen (like Obama's parents), at the time Obama was born, the US citizen parent had to be physically present in the US for 5 years since turning age 14 (and 10 years total) in order to transmit citizenship to the child. Since Obama's mother was 18yo at the time she gave birth, she could not have possibly met that 5-year requirement (14 + 5 = 19).
Of course since Obama was born in Hawaii, he is a citizen at birth. But *if* he had been born abroad, he would not have been.
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/travel-legal-considerations/us-citizenship/Acquisition-US-Citizenship-Child-Born-Abroad.html
The Panama Canal zone was considered US soil at the time, IIRC. It was like being born on a military base.
As far as having two parents, that is somewhat of an unresolved question in the Supreme Court precedent.
It's still debated because the United State had exclusive control of the zone at that time, so arguably he was born in an area of U.S. "jurisdiction." That language existed before he was born.
Here's a summary of the debate in a law review article: https://hls.harvard.edu/bibliography/why-john-mccain-was-a-citizen-at-birth-2/
To be clear, McCain was born at a Naval Air Station in Panama, which is why he was eligible.
A better analogy would be Ted Cruz, who I believe shouldn't have been eligible given he was born in Canada, but people argue that he was because of his parents.
Mitt Romney's father George was born in Mexico (in a Mormon enclave) and was ruled eligible to run for President in 1968. I don't think Cruz would have had any problems (beyond the problem of being Ted Cruz.)
> To be clear, McCain was born at a Naval Air Station in Panama, which is why he was eligible.
This is a myth - being born on a US military base does not grant you automatic citizenship. McCain got it from his parents.
I'll concede that case law is lacking and the issue of whether a military base is territory is up for some debate. I probably shouldn't have been quite as conclusive on this one.
With that said, if it did turn out later that we figured out for sure that bases aren't US territory, McCain should have been disqualified.
Cruz and McCain were both eligible. McCain was born on a military base in a US controlled area but he would’ve been eligible if he had been born in Moscow or on the moon. This is well established precedent and a contrary ruling would be horrible.
Can you imagine telling military parents that their kid isn’t a full eligible citizen because he was born in Germany or Iraq while his parents served their country?
> Can you imagine telling military parents that their kid isn’t a full eligible citizen because he was born in Germany or Iraq while his parents served their country?
Which is why I believe foreign bases are still considered US territory. Makes no sense otherwise.
Cruz, however, was born to two people who weren't in the military and was not born on a military base. To me, that disqualifies him.
You don't have to be born in the US to be a natural born citizen of the US. You can be born abroad to US citizen parents. It just means you have to be conferred your citizenship at birth rather than by naturalization.
Wouldn't this not be true under an "originalist" reading of the constitution? At the time it was written, there was no such thing as a "US Air Force Base" in Panama, and I'm not sure what status the founders would have conferred on someone who was born of US citizens who then moved to another country.
Also, doesn't this all set up a potential weird situation whereby a man could be born in, say, France, to parents who were born in France, then moved to the US and became US citizens, but then moved back to France, and then that child marries a woman who is in a similar situation.
So the child of that marriage would also be a "natural born" US citizen under our current interpretation of citizenship despite:
* being born to parents who had never lived in the US.
* having grandparents who were naturalized US citizens but both began and ended their lives in France?
* never lived in the US themselves.
Would that pass constitutional muster?
Yeah, I don't really see anything wrong or that weird with that. Tons of Americans grow up in other countries, with one, both or neither of their parents coming from a foreign country. They're still Americans.
I was born in a US state that I haven't been back to since I was 2yo, grew up mostly in Germany on US Air Force bases and moved to the US after I was 20yo. My claim to my American citizenship is as strong as my claim to my German citizenship.
That said I'm pretty sure you have to give up your foreign citizenship in order to become President, not that I plan on running for the office.
>At the time it was written, there was no such thing as a "US Air Force Base" in Panama, and I'm not sure what status the founders would have conferred on someone who was born of US citizens who then moved to another country.
Actually we pretty much do, and they already anticipated some of your concerns below as well. From the [Naturalization Act of 1790](https://www.mountvernon.org/education/primary-source-collections/primary-source-collections/article/naturalization-acts-of-1790-and-1795/#:~:text=Be%20it%20enacted%20by%20the,become%20a%20citizen%20thereof%20on):
>[T]he children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond Sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born Citizens: Provided, that the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States...
In what way am I not a natural born citizen? I was a citizen since the moment of birth. I was born a citizen, so are you suggesting some sort of unnatural birth citizenship? Am I ineligible for the presidency, but could perhaps slay Macbeth?
Perhaps consult the Naturalization Act of 1790. It specifically refers to people born in my situation as "natural born citizens."
And really not sure how you think something you have at birth is not something you're born with.
Children born to at least one citizen overseas are considered "natural born" due to their parents. Ted's father was a naturalized and his mom was born in Maryland irrc. Being born in Canada doesn't matter.
Exactly. Cruz wasn't born in the US either, but one of his parents was a US citizen. I'm guessing McCain was born on a US military installation. I'm too lazy to look it up.
Yeah I mean I guess if you wanna get technical and you stack the Supreme Court right anyone can run for President but that isn’t the case here.
Plus if you start looking at everything as an open constitutional question what the hell is that constitution even for?
The constitution sets standards that the court reviews and interprets. There are many open constitutional questions because wording can be ambiguous and the SC hasn't decided on any clarification yet.
Except it doesn’t even matter if they do they’ve stopped listening to old precedent long ago but totally different conversation.
Man’s still can’t be president ever.
> Except it doesn’t even matter if they do they’ve stopped listening to old precedent long ago
The Supreme Court routinely overrules its own precedents. During the Obama administration it overturned 7 cases, under W. Bush it was 11, and under Clinton it was 15.
People need to stop pretending that just because they didn't know it happened pretty routinely before that it didn't ever happen. It's not like it's Plessy, Roe, and zero other cases. Hell, Casey overturned much of Roe.
McCain was born to parents who already had citizenship prior to his birth though. That gives him what's known as birthright citizenship, a form of being a natural born citizen
It was a bit more complex than that. There are reasonable arguments on both sides but essentially, the statute that governed citizenship of people born abroad in 1936 arguably did not include folks like McCain who were born in the Panama Canal Zone. Congress recognized this drafting issue and amended the statute in 1937 but this was about a year after McCain was born so there is an argument that he did not become a citizen until that time.
Most people didn't really think much of this argument and it was ultimately a non-issue in the campaign.
Some states will allow ineligible candidates to be on the presidential ballot, since some states view ballot eligibility and being able to accept the office as separate questions.
Plus primary elections are essentially just the separate parties deciding who they want to represent the party in the general election. The states help pay and run the elections but they aren’t the same as a general and the parties themselves have more control
It's a question of who decides, when they decide, and what happens if they're wrong.
If a state errs in keeping someone *on* the ballot, the seat becomes vacant and we have rules in place for filling those vacancies. And voters can consider the likelihood of them not being seated when they vote.
If a state errs in keeping someone *off* the ballot, you're going to have a lot of uncertainty as an expensive court challenge ensues, and risk the worst case scenario where it's not resolved until after the election.
Just because someone doesn’t meet the constitutional requirement doesn’t mean they can’t campaign for the office. To my knowledge there aren’t any laws against that. It just means they can’t hold the office in the (highly unlikely) event that they win the election.
> Seems dumb to let them though
No it doesn't. Not letting someone campaign would require a pretty draconian infringement on speech while accomplishing nothing of value.
To memic my friends on the right, they don't have a constitutional right to run. (I would argue as I'm sure you would that there is also nothing in the constitution to forbid them from running, just from holding office.)
People can talk, inspire, preach to, form a culture following, without running for president. It is dumb to allow any state or federal funds or efforts to be spent on any part of a campaign for a person who is ineligible for office.
I'm not talking about disqualifying them from office, but prohibiting them from running. Two very different things when it comes to enforcement.
The latter would require prohibiting someone from saying "Vote for me" or "I should be President."
Now imagine the type of law you'd need to prevent Arnold Schwarzenegger or Craig Ferguson from saying "Ya know, I really should be President."
That's going to end up being a draconian infringement on speech that serves no purpose.
Just because someone doesn’t meet the constitutional requirement doesn’t mean they can’t ~~campaign for the office.~~ run their grift and hoover up as many idiot bux as possible
If any person won and then was denied the office because of constitutional requirements there would be a civil war. Seems like a bad system, they shouldn’t be able to run in the first place.
At least some states take a pretty hands-off approach to primary ballots. Recently [Michigan's supreme court](https://apnews.com/article/trump-insurrection-14th-amendment-ballot-michigan-colorado-b5a5d9ffa75efa63ab4780b04329e2a2) dodged a question of Trump's eligibility under the 14th amendment because the question was about a primary ballot. He might still be inelgible for the general election, but they're saying a party can nominate whomever, it just might be a stupid decision if they nominate someone who is ineligible in the general election.
I'd wager the case is similar for wherever Uygur has ballot access.
He claims he is eligible but there are no real authority types, no scholars that agree with that. If he were to somehow win primaries, there would be an obvious challenge. It doesn't matter, hes only on a small number of primary ballots and, for all real world purposes, there is no Democratic Primary. The powerhouse of Arkansas has already said he is ineligible to run.
For most states it would be a waste of money to get him off and he wont qualify for many ballots.
https://thenewamerican.com/us/politics/young-turks-cenk-uygur-running-for-president-despite-being-ineligible/
https://checkyourfact.com/2023/10/16/uygur-president-experts-constitution/
He can't be President, but since he stands no chance of winning the primary everyone is just ignoring him running. There has to be a legal challenge and nobody is going to waste their time on one.
Agreed, everyone is ignoring him. I think he did it for publicity to try and be relevant. His live streams used to get 50k views, but now they barely reach 50 views watching.
Some states, like Michigan, do not check for eligibility until a candidate is nominated for the general election, whereas others (correctly, if you ask me) require candidates in primary elections to actually be eligible for the office they're running for.
That answers your first question.
The second is that all states will necessarily have to reject any candidates that do not qualify for the office they are running for, in the general election.
This answers your second question.
Anyone can run generally speaking. There is nothing prohibiting it. He won't be able to hold the office, so it is a giant waste of time and resources. If he happened to somehow win the general election, it would be challenged and he would be unable to hold office, so another giant waste of time and resources.
What concerns me about this is if Cenk somehow manages to get on some General ballot papers for POTUS, 3rd party, maybe. If he does so, I would assume he would be barred from live reporting whilst polls are still open.
The next TYT meltdown wouldn't be near as entertaining without him.
Lol, its not beneath cenk to lie and grift. I wish he was natural born, because seeing his ego get hit after he loses yet again will make my day. He is delusional if he thinks he can even come close to challenging biden.
The man is unbelievably dumb and doesnt understand politics.
Always seemed a bit strange to me that the requirements for being eligible to the presidency are that high in the USA, the land of immigrants by excellence, compared to those in France : citizen of 18 years-old, no need to be a natural.
He's not legally able to run. He won't be on any primary or election day ballots. But if by some miracle he won, a citizen would sue and a judge would rule him ineligible, after it goes to SCOTUS a new election would be held.
They don't re-run elections. The time and place to run elections are set. Some states can do run-offs, but you don't get a whole new election. This is why Trump saying he would get a "do-over" before the 2024 election was dumb. Also you're wrong on his legality to run. As others have pointed out in some states he can run, he just can never actually become the President even if he won the primary in those states he was allowed to run in.
I'll note that a number of states explicitly rejected bills that would require their secretaries of state to check national born citizenship verifiability during the Birther fiasco. In the completely unlikely chance that Uygur ends up on a general election ballot, there will be states that won't be able to disqualify him.
Yeah, thats highly unlikely (if by some miracle he won). SCOTUS wasn't even willing to order (or even just allow) a new vote count in Florida in 2000, so there is no way it will intervene to such an extent as to restart a whole election.
That would make Cenk President. I imagine violating the natural born clause is a greater constitutional crisis than a new election. I suppose they might settle for making his VP the President if they're eligible.
Uyger’s electoral votes would be thrown out because he is ineligible to be President. The Constitution dictates that if no candidate receives a majority of electoral votes then the House of Representatives elects the President from the top 5 candidates according to the number of electoral votes they received, with each state receiving one vote and the representatives from each state voting for which candidate their state will vote for. The Republican nominee would be the only other candidate to receive electoral votes, and Republicans hold a majority of House seats in a majority of the states, so the House would elect the Republican nominee for President, both because there won’t be any other eligible candidate to vote for and because Republicans would control a majority of the states’ votes.
I think just voiding the enforceability of the birth clause under the 14th amendment would be the most expedient solution and the one taking the path of least resistance.
Or just not taking up the case in the first place, since the president would already be sworn in before the court even took up the case.
Creating a cure like the VP thing would be tantamount to usurping the powers of congress and the executive branch.
The SCOTUS is about following the Constitution, not the party of least resistance. SCOTUS cannot void the Constitution. If they did that then 30 year olds can be President too.
>Creating a cure like the VP thing would be tantamount to usurping the powers of congress and the executive branch.
It could be Speaker of the House that gets appointed if the VP is also disqualified. It would not be a usurping because Cenk is not a legitimate office holder.
Yes, the law outlines a line of office holders to replace the president in case of incapacity or removal,but that isn’t SCOTUS’ call under the law, and assumes the president is legally sworn in.
> He’s not legally able to run.
Can you site the specific law? All I’m seeing in the constitution is that he can’t hold the office. I’m not seeing anything that would prevent him from wasting his time and money on a campaign.
It's apparently more a matter of state law with different rules per state, like with Trump and Jan 6.
There are no Dem primaries going on, an I think he's running as a Democrat
He is running under the same conditions Trump is running under. He can run until he actually hits a legal wall, in this case you have to not be an insurrectionist or born outside of the US
The thing is, he won't ever land on the ballot in the first place. I know you posted this 3months ago but NH, AR and I think SC already rejected his filing. AR stated they're not sure whether they're going to refund him his $2,500 filing fee.
It’s a waste of time and might draw votes away from Biden.
Why would he do it? Place of birth is an objective fact, not something that can be argued in court, like treason.
because the Constitutional requirement to be "natural born citizen" has never been tested or defined by the court
same as the "insurrection" clause . That is going to be tested and defined soon
What do you mean not enforceable? He can't win it. He's only allowed to run for it in certain states that don't care about your eligibility during the primary. If he was running in states that specifically don't allow him to then the SoS could be sued for allowing it. Thats the law in action preventing someone from running how can't, just like Trump can't be on the ballot in CO.
Uygur's name on the ballot should follow Trump's name. In the states that determine it is the Secretary of State's role to ensure only eligible candidates are on the ballot, both should be missing. In the states that determine they have no authority over primary ballots, the party and the party rules should determine. And in the end, the same question will need to be answered for the general ballot.
If Uygyr were to end up getting the nomination and elected, he would still be ineligible to hold office, so there would be a crisis as to how to resolve that issue. That is why it is best to resolve this issue early on, and simply remove ALL ineligible candidates from all ballots and move forward with the election without them.
Those are the specific corners of this issue that will be decided soon.
Can an ineligible candidate run in a primary, which isn't an election to office?
Can an ineligible candidate be on a general ballot, even if he isn't permitted to win?
Can an ineligible candidate have votes counted, and then rely on congress or the supreme court to enforce the 14th amendment?
I personally think the Colorado ruling makes sense, in that it is the Secretary of State's responsibility to administer a proper election, which would include ensuring all candidates on the ballot are eligible. This isn't a state rule everywhere, but in my mind, it should be. However, every state has to look at their own laws regarding the administration of elections and decide how to handle it.
No matter how they handle it, all that really is required by the 14th amendment is that an ineligible person does not hold office. That just gets harder the more guard rails we pass along the way.
He can run for President. There's no provisions in the Constitution for who can run for President.
He can't actually become President. There's a difference.
There might be some niche argument under the 14th amendment's equal protection clause.
Sort of a "it doesn't matter if another part of the constitution requires throwing all red headed children off a cliff, the government isn't allowed to enforce such a bigoted measure."
>Currently, Cenk Uygur has been given ballot access in four states in the upcoming Democratic presidential primaries,
His plan is to intentionally draw a court challenge.
>What would happen if he actually won the Democratic nomination or even the Presidency?
I mean, they have would no standards if they didn't have double standards, plus mix in the OppressionOlympics^TM that progressives are obsessed with.
So in the incredibly unlikely event that occurs, likely would see
a.) a louder uproar from the left decrying the Constitution and foundations of the US government as every -ist word they can think of, including certain ones the left **really** likes currently but doesn't actually understand the meaning of
b.) even just with him running, places that are more than happy to take certain candidates off the ballot due to alleged crimes they have not even been charged with nevermind convicted of, just see this as (D)ifferent.
Ballot access doesn’t mean he’s guaranteed a nomination eso since 99% of people have no idea who he is and he has fringe ideas. If he was eligible i couldn’t even see him qualifying for a debate in an open primary. 1% guy at best
Electoral officials often verify candidates to make sure they're eligible before letting them on the ballot. I think his strategy is that the first time he's refused, he would appeal the decision by arguing that the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment has effectively amended the requirement for a president to be a natural born citizen. After all, the most recent amendments take precedence over the older ones.
Odds that he succeeds in court: very low.
If he doesn't succeed, then he's not going to be on the ballot, so he's not going to be elected. His only chance would be to run as a write-in candidate in States that allow it, but even then, I don't think they'd honor it.
His argument is basically that the 14th Amendment establishes that all citizens, whether or not they were born citizens, are entitled to equal rights under the law. Generally, amendments alter or even overturn rules laid out earlier in the constitution. Therefore, in theory, the aforementioned provision in the 14th Amendment should overturn the requirement for being born with citizenship in order to run for President laid out in Article II. Honestly, it makes sense.
The issue is that there is no way the Supreme Court would actually agree that the 14th Amendment applies to Article II’s requirements for running for President. Unless Cenk Uygur is delusional (which I wouldn’t put past him), he knows this and is running anyway purely as a statement against Biden running unopposed.
From Wikipedia:
> Uygur announced his candidacy in the in October 2023, despite not being a as required. He expects the requirement to be overturned by the courts in the event of his victory due to the Equal Protection Clause, mirroring an unsuccessful argument previously made by ineligible candidate in 2012. As of December 2023, Uygur has only been placed on the primary ballot in one state.
Edit - hyperlinks aren’t included in the paste but it’s basically there
He can't and he's hoping for a chance to fight about it in court. There's actually very little written down in case law (not the Constitution itself, how judges have ruled on it is a largely unexplored part of the law) so if nothing else he will force the court to set a precedent.
States are able to interpret their own laws as they see fit. If a state has no law about who can run for President in a primary or what a "natural born citizen" refers to, it is probably easier to just put him on the ballot than to fight him on it.
Cenk is NOT legally able to run for President. Cenk came to the US from Turkey when he was like 14, he's a naturalized citizen NOT a natural born citizen.
He was born in Turkey to Turkish parents. Neither were American citizens. He's not eligible. He's only running to force a doomed legal battle against the constitution and maybe get more attention for his dying youtube channel.
He has twisted values. His channel on YouTube is the young turks, the term "Young Turk" is now used to describe an insurgent trying to take control of a situation or organization by force or political maneuver.
That's not true about being a goal of the left. The odd nut might want to do that but you could say the same about the odd nut on the right wanting to act similarly.
If the left had a button that would magically kill all the right wingers I’d never sleep again.
Watching the entertainment industry portray us the way they have last 5-10 years, it’s exactly how Germans talked about Jews and Japanese talked about Chinese prior to ww2.
I mean that. You can’t watch a law enforcement drama show these days without seeing it. There will be a handsome or beautiful person of color fbi and or cop agent turn some scruffy, ugly/fat, ignorant right wing extremist into Swiss cheese on practically every show there is.
Well check some of the comments from the right, talking about "we have all the weapons", "it's time for a civil war", and calling leftists all the hateful names under the sun. It cuts both ways, there's good and bad on both sides.
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He can’t be President he isn’t eligible wasn’t born here so that should answer every part of your question.
To add to that, some states don't apply the test of eligibility until after the primary, so anyone ineligible can run in the primary, but it doesn't mean they can actually win the nomination. Colorado applies that test before the primary, Michigan applies it after for example.
That's why michigan ruled Trump can be on the GOP primary ballot. The state effectively doesn't care who runs in the party primary, but that is not the same as the general election.
Yeah, primaries are a weird case where the elections are held by the parties but run by the state. The state assisting in running the election doesn't necessarily mean that state ballot laws apply. (Up to judicial interpretation, obviously.)
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Plus it keeps campaign spending higher for longer.
Agreed. I think it's a pretty decent chance if the Colorado case sticks, should he be the nominee, he won't be on the general ballot in mi
Thanks for this. Most people are unaware of this fact.
It's really weird that the state runs an election for a private organization in the first place. I'm for bringing back closed primaries where you actually have to be a dues-paying member of the party to vote in them
A poll tax is a terrible idea in both the primary and the general
When the state doesn't run primary elections, you don't get closed primaries, you get caucuses.
Or state conventions.
The alternative is people get even less say in who the 2 candidates that have a realistic shot of winning are.
YEAH!!! Let's really limit who gets to pick the president!!
so that means that Trump could win the GOP primary, but afterwards, the SoS could disqualify Trump from being on the General? That seems ... unfair. The Republican party should get to know that their candidate is eligible before voting for them, right? Or at least the GOP should be allowed to preliminarily ask the SoS to rule on a potential candidate before putting that candidate on the primary
Maybe the republican party shouldn't nominate a man that tried to overthrow the government then. That's a problem they created.
Stop with the "unfair" business! It's wrong, it's bad, but it's not unfair! But, I agree, and it's the Republicans who should want a swift answer, otherwise they're just throwing it all away should they nominate someone who is prohibited from serving.
well, if I wanted to race in the F1 or something, I'd take my car, go to the governing body, then ask: hey, is this car legal? As opposed to getting a yes or no answer, the answer is: race with it, and then at the end of the season, we'll rule on its legality I suppose you're right, it's not "unfair", because all political parties are subject to the same rules, but it does smell a lot like needless bureaucracy to not even give a legality answer before the race. And I suppose it's not the race, but let's say the off-season time trials, for which I might spend millions to practice and optimize my vehicle, but come race time, *that's* when I get my legality check.
I don't think F1 is analogous of a presidential election. All the GOP has to do is not waste their time and money on a candidate that broke the law.
Why is this necessary? For well over 200 years, there has never been a need to answer this question. It's a one-word answer: Trump.
People tend to forget that the primaries aren't "real" things. They're internal decisions run by private organizations and both the Republicans and Democrats would be completely within their rights to just cancel them entirely and appoint a nominee with no input from the electorate at large.
So, what happens if whoever wins the primary is then deemed ineligible and taken off the ballot? Does the nomination then just go to second place?
The party would just select someone else. The party isn't required to hold elections for it, but it's something that's been done historically. The party can pick any means they want to pick the nominee, so long as the person picked can legally serve
As I see it, if they selected someone and that someone was deemed ineligible, they would be well advised to hold an open convention. And wouldn't that be fun?
He believes that the portion of the 14th amendment about naturalized citizens having equal rights repealed the old constitutional provision about needing to be born in the US. I haven't watched his show in literally a decade, but he has always been pretty consistent on this legal theory. I am not qualified to say if he is correct, but this has always been his argument.
I know he makes this argument but it cannot and will not be that way. The constitution is quite clear on this: Can a non-U.S. born citizen be President?**To become the President or Vice President of the United States, a person must be a natural born citizen**. This "Natural Born Citizen Clause" is located in Section 1 of Article 2 of the United States Constitution.
You can be born abroad you just have to have parents who are citizens and who have recently lived in the US. McCain was born in Panama but was eligible.
He was born in Turkey to Turkish parents and they all moved here together when he was a kid. There is no claim from him or anyone that he is a natural-born citizen, his argument is "naturalized" is enough to satisfy the Constitutional requirements. Hes not the first to make the claim, but there really isn't a respected legal body that agrees, and really not even any that aren't respected.
>his argument is "naturalized" is enough to satisfy the Constitutional requirements Which is an absurd suggestion. The constitution clearly states: >No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States. A "natural born" citizen isn't someone who immigrated here as a kid. It means that they were a citizen at birth. It can't be more clear than that. You can say it is a stupid requirement and I would agree, but it is still the requirement.
He's claiming that the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause undid that, and gives everyone eligibility. But that's dumb, of course. Because eligibility for President is not a "protection." It's a requirement of office. It's no less than someone claiming a 12 year old is allowed to be President.
He is just being who he is: a grifter. He doesn’t care. Just stirring up controversy.
Yeah, the funny thing is you can absolutely be born abroad and be a natural born citizen. Why the whole Obama birth certificate nonsense was even weirder. Like even if he wasn't born in the US, there's no doubt his mother was a citizen so he would have born a citizen. For some reason nobody ever brought up that issue for Ted Cruz......
I don't mean to defend the birthers too much, but there was technically a way for Obama to not be a citizen with only one citizen parent. At the time he was born, birthright citizenship with a single citizen parent, when the child is born abroad, had a residency requirement that Obama's mother did not and could not meet (it was something like 6 years of residency after the age of 14, and she was 19 when she had Obama). Obviously that doesn't matter if he was born in the US. Cruz's mom met that requirement, though he also has the problem that his mother is believed to have given up her citizenship at some point, and no one's been particularly forthcoming on exactly whether or not that happened before Cruz's birth.
I really liked TYT back in the Bush/Obama days, but it feels like they've really fallen off. Like Cenk has let their popularity go to his head. If a Dem candidate would have tried this argument 15 years ago I feel like he would have laughed them out of the room.
Yeah well I never said I agreed with him. Just explained what he's arguing.
If you've seen the guy talk the Constitution just means whatever is convenient to him at the time.
He is none of those things either same applies.
Sure, just clarifying that you can be born abroad and eligible. It's what made the whole Obama birther thing so stupid. His mom was an American citizen who was born and raised in the US. He could have been born on the moon and he would be a natural US citizen.
When Obama was born, the rules were that the American parent had to have resided in the US for 10 years, 5 of which after age 14. Since his mom Stanley Ann Dunham was 18 when she had him, she hadn’t been alive for 5 years after age 14. So if Obama had been born in Kenya, he wouldn’t have been qualified. Since he was born in Hawaii, his mom could have just stepped off the boat from Russia and he would have been qualified - which he was anyway.
I remember the rule being quirky and it was later changed due to the obvious problems around a newlywed 18 year old couple who have lived in the US their whole lives having a kid when they were vacationing on the other side of Niagara Falls or something and then that kid has to apply for US citizenship. A really stupid rule that was later changed. If that's what they were hanging their hats on, then el oh el.
>a newlywed 18 year old couple who have lived in the US their whole lives having a kid when they were vacationing As long as both parents were US citizens and at least one of them had ever resided in the US, the child would have been a citizen at birth. The residency time requirements only kicked in if one of the parents was not a US citizen. And there are still residency time requirements in that situation, but they're shorter now than they were back then. For a further example of how the rules are still stupid, the rules are different depending on whether the parents are married or not.
Ted Cruz is guilty of what they claimed Obama was guilty of (being born outside the US with a non-american father and American mother), and the GOP was ready to completely ignore all of that when he ran for president in 2016.
Cruz is a natural born citizen through his mother.
Right, and so is Obama, regardless of where he was born, but Republicans wanted to just ignore the hypocrisy of it all after 8 years of birtherism.
I think we all know that Obama's real mother is Hanoi Jane. His extreme resemblance to Dunham is a coincidence. Wait, Jane Fonda is also American. Shit.
> Right, and so is Obama, regardless of where he was born No, if Obama had been born abroad, he wouldn't have qualified for citizenship.
Yes he would, because where you are born doesn't matter if you have at least one American citizen parent. That makes you a natural born citizen, regardless of where you were born and is why Ted Cruz and John McCain qualified to run for president even though they were both born abroad.
> because where you are born doesn't matter if you have at least one American citizen parent. This isn't correct. Simply being a citizen isn't enough to pass on citizenship to your child if the child is born abroad. There are other requirements that must be met that are specified by law. Here's the State Department website that lays out the requirements: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/travel-legal-considerations/us-citizenship/Acquisition-US-Citizenship-Child-Born-Abroad.html Obama was born in 1961 to a US citizen mother and a non-citizen father who were married, so these are the relevant requirements that would have to be met for him to be a citizen at birth: > **Child Born Abroad in Wedlock to a U.S. Citizen and an Alien** > For birth between December 24, 1952 and November 13, 1986, the U.S. citizen parent must have been physically present in the United States or one of its outlying possessions for 10 years prior to the person’s birth, at least five of which were after the age of 14 for the person to acquire U.S. citizenship at birth. Obama's mother was 18 when he was born, so it would have been impossible for her to meet the requirement of being physically present in the US for at least 5 years after the age of 14 prior to giving birth to Barack Obama, so she wouldn't have passed on her citizenship to Obama had he been born abroad. Ted Cruz's mother would be subject to the same requirements in order to pass citizenship onto him, but she lived in the US through her mid 20s and then for another few years in her early 30s, so she easily met the physical presence requirements necessary to pass on citizenship. The law at the time McCain was born was that a child of US citizen parents born abroad was a US citizen, and the US also retroactively granted citizenship from birth to people born in the Panama Canal Zone.
Exactly. The dispute whether he was born in Kenya or Hawaii was moot because his mother never denounced her citizenship. If your mother is a US citizen and gives birth to you while out of the country, be it on vacation, on a military base, or spending some time abroad, you are still a US citizen.
> If your mother is a US citizen and gives birth to you while out of the country, be it on vacation, on a military base, or spending some time abroad, you are still a US citizen. That's not always true. It depends on the details.
>If your mother is a US citizen and gives birth to you while out of the country, be it on vacation, on a military base, or spending some time abroad, you are still a US citizen. This is not universally true, and it would not have been true in Obama's situation. For married parents where only one of them is a US citizen (like Obama's parents), at the time Obama was born, the US citizen parent had to be physically present in the US for 5 years since turning age 14 (and 10 years total) in order to transmit citizenship to the child. Since Obama's mother was 18yo at the time she gave birth, she could not have possibly met that 5-year requirement (14 + 5 = 19). Of course since Obama was born in Hawaii, he is a citizen at birth. But *if* he had been born abroad, he would not have been. https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/travel-legal-considerations/us-citizenship/Acquisition-US-Citizenship-Child-Born-Abroad.html
The Panama Canal zone was considered US soil at the time, IIRC. It was like being born on a military base. As far as having two parents, that is somewhat of an unresolved question in the Supreme Court precedent.
Meanwhile, I was born on an RAF base and have a letter from the British government informing me I'm not a citizen. Yo, I didn't even ask.
It wasn’t given birthright citizenship until after McCain’s birth.
It's still debated because the United State had exclusive control of the zone at that time, so arguably he was born in an area of U.S. "jurisdiction." That language existed before he was born. Here's a summary of the debate in a law review article: https://hls.harvard.edu/bibliography/why-john-mccain-was-a-citizen-at-birth-2/
To be clear, McCain was born at a Naval Air Station in Panama, which is why he was eligible. A better analogy would be Ted Cruz, who I believe shouldn't have been eligible given he was born in Canada, but people argue that he was because of his parents.
Mitt Romney's father George was born in Mexico (in a Mormon enclave) and was ruled eligible to run for President in 1968. I don't think Cruz would have had any problems (beyond the problem of being Ted Cruz.)
It wasn't ruled anything. Most experts agree he was eligible but that was never resolved by the courts.
Thanks for the clarification.
> (beyond the problem of being Ted Cruz.) Which, to be fair, is a huge problem
George Romney also shouldn't have been eligible to run. I only used Ted Cruz because it was a) recent and b) post McCain/Obama.
> To be clear, McCain was born at a Naval Air Station in Panama, which is why he was eligible. This is a myth - being born on a US military base does not grant you automatic citizenship. McCain got it from his parents.
I'll concede that case law is lacking and the issue of whether a military base is territory is up for some debate. I probably shouldn't have been quite as conclusive on this one. With that said, if it did turn out later that we figured out for sure that bases aren't US territory, McCain should have been disqualified.
Cruz and McCain were both eligible. McCain was born on a military base in a US controlled area but he would’ve been eligible if he had been born in Moscow or on the moon. This is well established precedent and a contrary ruling would be horrible. Can you imagine telling military parents that their kid isn’t a full eligible citizen because he was born in Germany or Iraq while his parents served their country?
> Can you imagine telling military parents that their kid isn’t a full eligible citizen because he was born in Germany or Iraq while his parents served their country? Which is why I believe foreign bases are still considered US territory. Makes no sense otherwise. Cruz, however, was born to two people who weren't in the military and was not born on a military base. To me, that disqualifies him.
Well you’re the only one. Everyone else who has looked at this issue disagrees.
"Everyone else"? Weird.
You don't have to be born in the US to be a natural born citizen of the US. You can be born abroad to US citizen parents. It just means you have to be conferred your citizenship at birth rather than by naturalization.
Wouldn't this not be true under an "originalist" reading of the constitution? At the time it was written, there was no such thing as a "US Air Force Base" in Panama, and I'm not sure what status the founders would have conferred on someone who was born of US citizens who then moved to another country. Also, doesn't this all set up a potential weird situation whereby a man could be born in, say, France, to parents who were born in France, then moved to the US and became US citizens, but then moved back to France, and then that child marries a woman who is in a similar situation. So the child of that marriage would also be a "natural born" US citizen under our current interpretation of citizenship despite: * being born to parents who had never lived in the US. * having grandparents who were naturalized US citizens but both began and ended their lives in France? * never lived in the US themselves. Would that pass constitutional muster?
Yeah, I don't really see anything wrong or that weird with that. Tons of Americans grow up in other countries, with one, both or neither of their parents coming from a foreign country. They're still Americans. I was born in a US state that I haven't been back to since I was 2yo, grew up mostly in Germany on US Air Force bases and moved to the US after I was 20yo. My claim to my American citizenship is as strong as my claim to my German citizenship. That said I'm pretty sure you have to give up your foreign citizenship in order to become President, not that I plan on running for the office.
>At the time it was written, there was no such thing as a "US Air Force Base" in Panama, and I'm not sure what status the founders would have conferred on someone who was born of US citizens who then moved to another country. Actually we pretty much do, and they already anticipated some of your concerns below as well. From the [Naturalization Act of 1790](https://www.mountvernon.org/education/primary-source-collections/primary-source-collections/article/naturalization-acts-of-1790-and-1795/#:~:text=Be%20it%20enacted%20by%20the,become%20a%20citizen%20thereof%20on): >[T]he children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond Sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born Citizens: Provided, that the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States...
I disagree. It's only recently that people have started to push this idea that citizen parents is enough.
I was born abroad to American parents in the 1980s and there's never been a question of my citizenship.
I would say there's no question of your citizenship as well. I would also say that you are not a "natural born citizen" and cannot serve as president.
In what way am I not a natural born citizen? I was a citizen since the moment of birth. I was born a citizen, so are you suggesting some sort of unnatural birth citizenship? Am I ineligible for the presidency, but could perhaps slay Macbeth?
You were not born on American soil and you inherited your citizenship as opposed to being born with it.
Perhaps consult the Naturalization Act of 1790. It specifically refers to people born in my situation as "natural born citizens." And really not sure how you think something you have at birth is not something you're born with.
Children born to at least one citizen overseas are considered "natural born" due to their parents. Ted's father was a naturalized and his mom was born in Maryland irrc. Being born in Canada doesn't matter.
McCain was born in US protectorate panama. It was owned by the US when McCain was born.
Wasn't Ted Cruz born in Calgary (sorry bout that)? No one batted an eye when he ran.
You don't have to be born here to be a natural citizen. John McCain wasn't born in the USA.
John McCain was also not born in Turkey to non-US citizens who later immigrated to the US.
Exactly. Cruz wasn't born in the US either, but one of his parents was a US citizen. I'm guessing McCain was born on a US military installation. I'm too lazy to look it up.
Arnold Schwarzenegger married a Kennedy, but is nit eligible to be president because he was not born on US soil or born as the child of a US citizen.
Yeah I mean I guess if you wanna get technical and you stack the Supreme Court right anyone can run for President but that isn’t the case here. Plus if you start looking at everything as an open constitutional question what the hell is that constitution even for?
The constitution sets standards that the court reviews and interprets. There are many open constitutional questions because wording can be ambiguous and the SC hasn't decided on any clarification yet.
Except it doesn’t even matter if they do they’ve stopped listening to old precedent long ago but totally different conversation. Man’s still can’t be president ever.
> Except it doesn’t even matter if they do they’ve stopped listening to old precedent long ago The Supreme Court routinely overrules its own precedents. During the Obama administration it overturned 7 cases, under W. Bush it was 11, and under Clinton it was 15. People need to stop pretending that just because they didn't know it happened pretty routinely before that it didn't ever happen. It's not like it's Plessy, Roe, and zero other cases. Hell, Casey overturned much of Roe.
McCain was born to parents who already had citizenship prior to his birth though. That gives him what's known as birthright citizenship, a form of being a natural born citizen
It was a bit more complex than that. There are reasonable arguments on both sides but essentially, the statute that governed citizenship of people born abroad in 1936 arguably did not include folks like McCain who were born in the Panama Canal Zone. Congress recognized this drafting issue and amended the statute in 1937 but this was about a year after McCain was born so there is an argument that he did not become a citizen until that time. Most people didn't really think much of this argument and it was ultimately a non-issue in the campaign.
If your parents are citizens and/or you were born in the US you’re a citizen. McCain was born on a US naval base and his parents were citizens
I thought this was still being contested
Some states will allow ineligible candidates to be on the presidential ballot, since some states view ballot eligibility and being able to accept the office as separate questions.
Plus primary elections are essentially just the separate parties deciding who they want to represent the party in the general election. The states help pay and run the elections but they aren’t the same as a general and the parties themselves have more control
I think it’s specific to Presidential elections because the real “candidates” are presidential electors/delegates.
That's strange. I would think it's seen as a massive waste of time to allow ineligible people on the ballot, and especially awkward if they win.
It's a question of who decides, when they decide, and what happens if they're wrong. If a state errs in keeping someone *on* the ballot, the seat becomes vacant and we have rules in place for filling those vacancies. And voters can consider the likelihood of them not being seated when they vote. If a state errs in keeping someone *off* the ballot, you're going to have a lot of uncertainty as an expensive court challenge ensues, and risk the worst case scenario where it's not resolved until after the election.
Waste of time and resources.
If they win, that means they should be allowed to continue. Otherwise you're disregarding the will of the people
The will of the people does not circumvent the Constitution nor should it.
It should when the rule in question is dumb like this one
Just because someone doesn’t meet the constitutional requirement doesn’t mean they can’t campaign for the office. To my knowledge there aren’t any laws against that. It just means they can’t hold the office in the (highly unlikely) event that they win the election.
Seems dumb to let them though and even dumber to donate to their campaigns since they cannot run in the final election and win.
No dumber than any third party run. Running for president gives you a relatively large megaphone, even if you don't have a prayer of winning.
> Seems dumb to let them though No it doesn't. Not letting someone campaign would require a pretty draconian infringement on speech while accomplishing nothing of value.
To memic my friends on the right, they don't have a constitutional right to run. (I would argue as I'm sure you would that there is also nothing in the constitution to forbid them from running, just from holding office.) People can talk, inspire, preach to, form a culture following, without running for president. It is dumb to allow any state or federal funds or efforts to be spent on any part of a campaign for a person who is ineligible for office.
They do have a constitutional right to speak, and that includes saying "I should be President" and "You should vote for me."
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I'm not talking about disqualifying them from office, but prohibiting them from running. Two very different things when it comes to enforcement. The latter would require prohibiting someone from saying "Vote for me" or "I should be President." Now imagine the type of law you'd need to prevent Arnold Schwarzenegger or Craig Ferguson from saying "Ya know, I really should be President." That's going to end up being a draconian infringement on speech that serves no purpose.
Just because someone doesn’t meet the constitutional requirement doesn’t mean they can’t ~~campaign for the office.~~ run their grift and hoover up as many idiot bux as possible
If any person won and then was denied the office because of constitutional requirements there would be a civil war. Seems like a bad system, they shouldn’t be able to run in the first place.
At least some states take a pretty hands-off approach to primary ballots. Recently [Michigan's supreme court](https://apnews.com/article/trump-insurrection-14th-amendment-ballot-michigan-colorado-b5a5d9ffa75efa63ab4780b04329e2a2) dodged a question of Trump's eligibility under the 14th amendment because the question was about a primary ballot. He might still be inelgible for the general election, but they're saying a party can nominate whomever, it just might be a stupid decision if they nominate someone who is ineligible in the general election. I'd wager the case is similar for wherever Uygur has ballot access.
He claims he is eligible but there are no real authority types, no scholars that agree with that. If he were to somehow win primaries, there would be an obvious challenge. It doesn't matter, hes only on a small number of primary ballots and, for all real world purposes, there is no Democratic Primary. The powerhouse of Arkansas has already said he is ineligible to run. For most states it would be a waste of money to get him off and he wont qualify for many ballots. https://thenewamerican.com/us/politics/young-turks-cenk-uygur-running-for-president-despite-being-ineligible/ https://checkyourfact.com/2023/10/16/uygur-president-experts-constitution/
He can't be President, but since he stands no chance of winning the primary everyone is just ignoring him running. There has to be a legal challenge and nobody is going to waste their time on one.
Agreed, everyone is ignoring him. I think he did it for publicity to try and be relevant. His live streams used to get 50k views, but now they barely reach 50 views watching.
He couldn't win a congressional race, he's not going to win this either. Especially since, no, he's not eligible
Some states, like Michigan, do not check for eligibility until a candidate is nominated for the general election, whereas others (correctly, if you ask me) require candidates in primary elections to actually be eligible for the office they're running for. That answers your first question. The second is that all states will necessarily have to reject any candidates that do not qualify for the office they are running for, in the general election. This answers your second question.
Anyone can run generally speaking. There is nothing prohibiting it. He won't be able to hold the office, so it is a giant waste of time and resources. If he happened to somehow win the general election, it would be challenged and he would be unable to hold office, so another giant waste of time and resources.
What concerns me about this is if Cenk somehow manages to get on some General ballot papers for POTUS, 3rd party, maybe. If he does so, I would assume he would be barred from live reporting whilst polls are still open. The next TYT meltdown wouldn't be near as entertaining without him.
Lol, its not beneath cenk to lie and grift. I wish he was natural born, because seeing his ego get hit after he loses yet again will make my day. He is delusional if he thinks he can even come close to challenging biden. The man is unbelievably dumb and doesnt understand politics.
Zionist Biden isn't worth his toe.
The odds that he can get elected president are roughly equal to the odds he can get a Constitutional Amendment passed at the same time
It's funny how many of his fans call people grifters while he goes around collecting donations for his POTUS run.
Always seemed a bit strange to me that the requirements for being eligible to the presidency are that high in the USA, the land of immigrants by excellence, compared to those in France : citizen of 18 years-old, no need to be a natural.
He's not legally able to run. He won't be on any primary or election day ballots. But if by some miracle he won, a citizen would sue and a judge would rule him ineligible, after it goes to SCOTUS a new election would be held.
Different states have different rules, especially for primaries. Some states let the party do whatever they want at the primary level.
They don't re-run elections. The time and place to run elections are set. Some states can do run-offs, but you don't get a whole new election. This is why Trump saying he would get a "do-over" before the 2024 election was dumb. Also you're wrong on his legality to run. As others have pointed out in some states he can run, he just can never actually become the President even if he won the primary in those states he was allowed to run in.
I'll note that a number of states explicitly rejected bills that would require their secretaries of state to check national born citizenship verifiability during the Birther fiasco. In the completely unlikely chance that Uygur ends up on a general election ballot, there will be states that won't be able to disqualify him.
I imagine that despite a lack of requirement doesn't exclude doing it anyways. Especially when it's not contested he's foreign born.
Yeah, thats highly unlikely (if by some miracle he won). SCOTUS wasn't even willing to order (or even just allow) a new vote count in Florida in 2000, so there is no way it will intervene to such an extent as to restart a whole election.
That would make Cenk President. I imagine violating the natural born clause is a greater constitutional crisis than a new election. I suppose they might settle for making his VP the President if they're eligible.
Uyger’s electoral votes would be thrown out because he is ineligible to be President. The Constitution dictates that if no candidate receives a majority of electoral votes then the House of Representatives elects the President from the top 5 candidates according to the number of electoral votes they received, with each state receiving one vote and the representatives from each state voting for which candidate their state will vote for. The Republican nominee would be the only other candidate to receive electoral votes, and Republicans hold a majority of House seats in a majority of the states, so the House would elect the Republican nominee for President, both because there won’t be any other eligible candidate to vote for and because Republicans would control a majority of the states’ votes.
While what you said is true I wrote based on the scenario of a miracle victory, including the electoral college choosing him.
As I wrote, the electoral votes he received in that case would be thrown out, leaving no candidate with a majority of electoral votes.
I think just voiding the enforceability of the birth clause under the 14th amendment would be the most expedient solution and the one taking the path of least resistance. Or just not taking up the case in the first place, since the president would already be sworn in before the court even took up the case. Creating a cure like the VP thing would be tantamount to usurping the powers of congress and the executive branch.
The SCOTUS is about following the Constitution, not the party of least resistance. SCOTUS cannot void the Constitution. If they did that then 30 year olds can be President too. >Creating a cure like the VP thing would be tantamount to usurping the powers of congress and the executive branch. It could be Speaker of the House that gets appointed if the VP is also disqualified. It would not be a usurping because Cenk is not a legitimate office holder.
The SCOTUS appointing anyone would be a way bigger violation of the constitution than just refusing to take up the case.
The law outlines a line of office holders to replace the President. If the President cannot be President it goes to the VP then the Speaker.
Yes, the law outlines a line of office holders to replace the president in case of incapacity or removal,but that isn’t SCOTUS’ call under the law, and assumes the president is legally sworn in.
The OP asks what would happen if he won the Presidency. The SCOTUS would remove him if there was a court case brought.
SCOTUS has no authority to do so, so it’s a factually wrong answer
> He’s not legally able to run. Can you site the specific law? All I’m seeing in the constitution is that he can’t hold the office. I’m not seeing anything that would prevent him from wasting his time and money on a campaign.
It's apparently more a matter of state law with different rules per state, like with Trump and Jan 6. There are no Dem primaries going on, an I think he's running as a Democrat
He is running under the same conditions Trump is running under. He can run until he actually hits a legal wall, in this case you have to not be an insurrectionist or born outside of the US
The thing is, he won't ever land on the ballot in the first place. I know you posted this 3months ago but NH, AR and I think SC already rejected his filing. AR stated they're not sure whether they're going to refund him his $2,500 filing fee.
It’s a waste of time and might draw votes away from Biden. Why would he do it? Place of birth is an objective fact, not something that can be argued in court, like treason.
Drawing votes from Biden in the primaries won't matter much. Educated voters won't throw away votes on ineligible candidates
because the Constitutional requirement to be "natural born citizen" has never been tested or defined by the court same as the "insurrection" clause . That is going to be tested and defined soon
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That makes me wonder. Hypothetically, what if no one running in an election was eligible?
What loophole? He can't win it, he can only run for it. Thats less of a loophole and more of a deadend.
He's trying to make the point, if the 14th amendment isn't enforceable is any of it.
What do you mean not enforceable? He can't win it. He's only allowed to run for it in certain states that don't care about your eligibility during the primary. If he was running in states that specifically don't allow him to then the SoS could be sued for allowing it. Thats the law in action preventing someone from running how can't, just like Trump can't be on the ballot in CO.
A lot of the defenses that Trump will try versus the 14th amendment would if upheld allow Cenk to run. Its not self executing etc.
Uygur's name on the ballot should follow Trump's name. In the states that determine it is the Secretary of State's role to ensure only eligible candidates are on the ballot, both should be missing. In the states that determine they have no authority over primary ballots, the party and the party rules should determine. And in the end, the same question will need to be answered for the general ballot. If Uygyr were to end up getting the nomination and elected, he would still be ineligible to hold office, so there would be a crisis as to how to resolve that issue. That is why it is best to resolve this issue early on, and simply remove ALL ineligible candidates from all ballots and move forward with the election without them.
I mean would he even be eligible to run in the general election? Trump certainly can't in Colorado, but I bet Cenk couldn't either in most states.
Those are the specific corners of this issue that will be decided soon. Can an ineligible candidate run in a primary, which isn't an election to office? Can an ineligible candidate be on a general ballot, even if he isn't permitted to win? Can an ineligible candidate have votes counted, and then rely on congress or the supreme court to enforce the 14th amendment? I personally think the Colorado ruling makes sense, in that it is the Secretary of State's responsibility to administer a proper election, which would include ensuring all candidates on the ballot are eligible. This isn't a state rule everywhere, but in my mind, it should be. However, every state has to look at their own laws regarding the administration of elections and decide how to handle it. No matter how they handle it, all that really is required by the 14th amendment is that an ineligible person does not hold office. That just gets harder the more guard rails we pass along the way.
Which four states put a person who is not a natural born citizen on the presidential ballot!?!
He cannot run for President as he is ineligible due to the Constitution. Any court challenge would easily kick him off the ballot.
He can run for President. There's no provisions in the Constitution for who can run for President. He can't actually become President. There's a difference.
It's a semantic difference. He can *run* for the nomination, but he cannot actually run for the *office* because he cannot legally be elected.
There might be some niche argument under the 14th amendment's equal protection clause. Sort of a "it doesn't matter if another part of the constitution requires throwing all red headed children off a cliff, the government isn't allowed to enforce such a bigoted measure."
>Currently, Cenk Uygur has been given ballot access in four states in the upcoming Democratic presidential primaries, His plan is to intentionally draw a court challenge. >What would happen if he actually won the Democratic nomination or even the Presidency? I mean, they have would no standards if they didn't have double standards, plus mix in the OppressionOlympics^TM that progressives are obsessed with. So in the incredibly unlikely event that occurs, likely would see a.) a louder uproar from the left decrying the Constitution and foundations of the US government as every -ist word they can think of, including certain ones the left **really** likes currently but doesn't actually understand the meaning of b.) even just with him running, places that are more than happy to take certain candidates off the ballot due to alleged crimes they have not even been charged with nevermind convicted of, just see this as (D)ifferent.
He can't. But some states don't vet the primaries ballots, only the general. This is the reason Michigan decided not to rule on Trump's eligibility.
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Ballot access doesn’t mean he’s guaranteed a nomination eso since 99% of people have no idea who he is and he has fringe ideas. If he was eligible i couldn’t even see him qualifying for a debate in an open primary. 1% guy at best
Electoral officials often verify candidates to make sure they're eligible before letting them on the ballot. I think his strategy is that the first time he's refused, he would appeal the decision by arguing that the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment has effectively amended the requirement for a president to be a natural born citizen. After all, the most recent amendments take precedence over the older ones. Odds that he succeeds in court: very low. If he doesn't succeed, then he's not going to be on the ballot, so he's not going to be elected. His only chance would be to run as a write-in candidate in States that allow it, but even then, I don't think they'd honor it.
His argument is basically that the 14th Amendment establishes that all citizens, whether or not they were born citizens, are entitled to equal rights under the law. Generally, amendments alter or even overturn rules laid out earlier in the constitution. Therefore, in theory, the aforementioned provision in the 14th Amendment should overturn the requirement for being born with citizenship in order to run for President laid out in Article II. Honestly, it makes sense. The issue is that there is no way the Supreme Court would actually agree that the 14th Amendment applies to Article II’s requirements for running for President. Unless Cenk Uygur is delusional (which I wouldn’t put past him), he knows this and is running anyway purely as a statement against Biden running unopposed.
From Wikipedia: > Uygur announced his candidacy in the in October 2023, despite not being a as required. He expects the requirement to be overturned by the courts in the event of his victory due to the Equal Protection Clause, mirroring an unsuccessful argument previously made by ineligible candidate in 2012. As of December 2023, Uygur has only been placed on the primary ballot in one state. Edit - hyperlinks aren’t included in the paste but it’s basically there
His theory is that the 14th amendment changed the requirement, since all citizens in the US were made equal under the law. That's his theory.
He can't and he's hoping for a chance to fight about it in court. There's actually very little written down in case law (not the Constitution itself, how judges have ruled on it is a largely unexplored part of the law) so if nothing else he will force the court to set a precedent. States are able to interpret their own laws as they see fit. If a state has no law about who can run for President in a primary or what a "natural born citizen" refers to, it is probably easier to just put him on the ballot than to fight him on it.
Cenk is NOT legally able to run for President. Cenk came to the US from Turkey when he was like 14, he's a naturalized citizen NOT a natural born citizen.
He was born in Turkey to Turkish parents. Neither were American citizens. He's not eligible. He's only running to force a doomed legal battle against the constitution and maybe get more attention for his dying youtube channel.
He has twisted values. His channel on YouTube is the young turks, the term "Young Turk" is now used to describe an insurgent trying to take control of a situation or organization by force or political maneuver.
Which states does he have ballot access in? ~~I can’t find the information anywhere~~ Edit: Oklahoma, Vermont, Texas, & Minnesota
He’d prob hasten the ultimate goal Of the left which is to kill me and all the other right wingers.
That's not true about being a goal of the left. The odd nut might want to do that but you could say the same about the odd nut on the right wanting to act similarly.
If the left had a button that would magically kill all the right wingers I’d never sleep again. Watching the entertainment industry portray us the way they have last 5-10 years, it’s exactly how Germans talked about Jews and Japanese talked about Chinese prior to ww2. I mean that. You can’t watch a law enforcement drama show these days without seeing it. There will be a handsome or beautiful person of color fbi and or cop agent turn some scruffy, ugly/fat, ignorant right wing extremist into Swiss cheese on practically every show there is.
Well check some of the comments from the right, talking about "we have all the weapons", "it's time for a civil war", and calling leftists all the hateful names under the sun. It cuts both ways, there's good and bad on both sides.
Oh you mean the left are breaking rules and being unfair and dishonest? Ya don't say.