so it begins…

Mastodon

The Republican majority in the Arizona Senate passed a bill on Monday to ensure that any presidential candidate “may not be excluded or removed from the general election ballot on the basis of a claimed violation of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution” if that candidate is an official party nominee.

The bill — introduced in the state Senate by Republican Sens. Janae Shamp, Sonny Borrelli, Frank Carroll and David Gowan, and in the state House of Representatives by Republican Reps. Steve Montenegro and Austin Smith — aims to circumvent a possible Supreme Court ruling that could result in Trump being removed from the ballot in certain states.

Thus far, the former president has been removed from the primary ballot in three states — Colorado, Maine and Illinois — but those rulings are on pause until the nation’s high court rules on the Trump campaign’s appeal of the Colorado ruling. The Arizona bill comes after Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (R) has already said that Trump can’t be barred from the state’s ballot because of a 14th Amendment violation. As the Arizona Mirror notes, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that lawmakers — U.S. Reps. Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar as well as state Rep. Mark Finchem — couldn’t be removed from office because of their participation in the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.