Another lawsuit has been filed challenging the basic eligibility of former President Donald Trump to appear on the ballot in the 2024 presidential race.
This time, the case was brought in Michigan, which Joe Biden won in the 2020 presidential contest after a Trump victory there four years prior. Michigan also saw some of the frenzied efforts by Trump’s circles to secure him another four years after 2020 despite losing. It was in Detroit that a crowd of angry Trump supporters became so physically antagonistic at a vote counting center that those running it were left putting cardboard in the windows to block voters’ personal information that was viewable inside. Michigan is also one of the states where Trump allies assembled a sham slate of electors on his behalf, purporting to assemble electoral votes for him despite Biden’s win there.
Also in Michigan, several allies to Trump, including an attorney who received the former president’s endorsement in the 2022 race for state attorney general, were criminally charged in connection to an incident involving the covert collection of election machines. It mirrored what happened in several other jurisdictions, in which allies to Trump tried to assemble supporting data for their debunked election theories from the machinery used in the actual contest — machinery they repeatedly accessed outside the normal procedures, which protect these items from interference.
The lawsuits challenging Trump appearing on the 2024 ballot at all rest on the provisions of the 14th Amendment that prohibit individuals from holding office if they previously took an oath to defend the Constitution and then engaged in insurrection. Those filing these cases are running with the argument that no criminal conviction against Trump is necessary to enforce the restrictions they believe to clearly apply. The Michigan case has the involvement of the advocacy group Free Speech for People, which also helped bring a similar case in Minnesota. Out west, another similar lawsuit was filed in Colorado with the involvement of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), another highly active advocacy group. In the Minnesota case, Free Speech for People says there will be oral arguments in November.
