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Would Congress have power after the election of a President, to boot a POTUS who was not qualified -- via the impeachment process?
. There are only two qualifications to run for president.
They have to be native born and 35 or older.
What I mean is, is there any provision for fast tracking a process to boot a president-elect, or would they then be stuck with the standard impeachment procedures after January?
There seems to be need of a Goldilocks zone, where it is easier to kick out criminal riffraff from the Oval, but not so easy that it is constantly weaponized.
There are three constitutional requirements:
Natural born US Citizen
35 years old
14 years living in the USA
Impeachment is for a sitting president who commits high crimes, misdemeanors.
Well, but how is Section 3 of 14th Amendment enforced? Assuming the SCOTUS rules that individual states do not have the ability to toss Presidential candidates(or by extension, VP) from the ballot because of the peculiar nature of the office, how does that get enforced?
I expect a unanimous but very limited ruling preventing states from disqualifying Presidential candidates based on Section 3. I think they ignore the implications of the ruling to, say, a state determining to not allow a 27 year old on the ballot, let alone a Obama Kenya thing, and limit it to that provision only. And I think they recognize the power of the state to determine eligibility for every other office, including Reps and Senators since there is no risk of differing decisions for the same candidate, no incentive to be the first in with a factual determination pro or con to bind the rest of the country. But it does set up an interesting question: how do you enforce Section 3 nationally? I suppose once they are actually seated you could impeach them, but there is another intriguing option.
Congress has used its power to police its own membership to refuse to seat members under Section 3 twice: once when someone actually elected an actual Socialist - a real one, not a right wing talking point one - to the House* and once to refuse to seat someone who had been the Confederate governor of North Carolina. I think he was governor at the time of secession but am not motivated enough to look it up. Anyway that leaves this possibility...
January 6, 2025. The Dems have retained the Senate and gained a majority in the House, but Trump has won. Kamala Harris with the Dems united behind her refuses to certify the electoral votes because one candidate is disqualified from office under Section 3...
* To be fair, he had been convicted under the espionage act.
