OPINION: Democrats rush to keep Trump off ballot because election can't be left to voters

OPINION: Democrats rush to keep Trump off ballot because election can't be left to voters

The following is an excerpt from an opinion article by Jonathan Turley:

Calling it "one on a huge list of priorities," Rep. Jamie Raskin, D., Md., announced that he will be reintroducing a prior bill with Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., and Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., to disqualify not just former President Donald Trump but a large number of Republicans from taking office.

The alternative, it appears, is unthinkable: allowing the public to choose their next president and representatives in Congress. It appears that the last thing Democrats want is for the unanimous decision to actually lead to an outbreak of democracy. Where the Court expressly warned of "chaos" in elections, Raskin and others appear eager to be agents of chaos in Congress.

Soon after the decision, Raskin went on CNN to assure people that he and his colleagues would not stand by and allow the right to vote to be restored to citizens in the upcoming election. He pledged to reintroduce a prior bill that would declare Jan. 6 an "insurrection" and that those involved "engaged in insurrection."

I previously wrote about these "ballot cleansing" efforts because it would not just disqualify Trump but potentially dozens of sitting Republican members of Congress. Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., sought to bar 126 members of Congress under the same theory. Similar legislation offered by Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., to disqualify members got 63 co-sponsors, all Democrats.

Raskin's participation in this effort is crushingly ironic. In 2016, he sought to block certification of the 2016 election under the very same law as violent protests were occurring before the inauguration.