Given how many hurdles the court had to jump through to get to the merits, it’s kind of amazing it did. Take, for example, the very first argument made by Trump: his attorneys argued that the electors could not sue to prevent the Secretary of State from putting him on the ballot because the Secretary has no duty to independently investigate the candidate’s eligibility. Instead, she need only rely on the political party’s statement that the person is their bona fide candidate. This is exactly the type of pedantic argument government attorneys make all the time, but the court wasn’t having it.
First, states have the authority to assess the qualifications of presidential candidates. Citing then‐Judge Neil Gorsuch, the court wrote that states have a “legitimate interest in protecting the integrity and practical functioning of the political process” that “permits [them] to exclude from the ballot candidates who are constitutionally prohibited from assuming office.”
Second, Colorado election law does not just allow people to challenge the Secretary’s breach of affirmative duties; it allows people to sue for any wrongful act. And it would certainly be wrongful for the Secretary to put an unqualified person on the ballot when the code explicitly states that all candidates must be qualified.
The Colorado Supreme Court next dispensed with the argument that taking Trump off of the ballot would violate the free association rights of the Republican Party. If that were true, the court said, it would mean any political party could override the Constitution by putting ineligible people on the ballot (i.e., people who are too young, not a natural born citizen, etc.) and states couldn’t do anything about it.
