Missouri’s top election official threatens to remove Biden from 2024 ballot

As the Supreme Court takes on the case to determine whether former president Donald Trump can be removed from Colorado’s 2024 presidential ballot, Missouri’s Secretary of State said he would hold President Joe Biden to the “new legal standard” if the ruling isn’t overturned.

Last month, Colorado’s Supreme Court ruled that Mr Trump was ineligible for the presidency, citing the Consitution’s insurrection clause. Shortly after the decision in Colorado, Maine’s Secretary of State also disqualified Mr Trump from the state’s presidential primary ballot.

Hours after the Supreme Court announced it would hear Mr Trump’s appeal of the Colorado decision on 5 January, Missouri’s Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft wrote on X: “What has happened in Colorado & Maine is disgraceful & undermines our republic. While I expect the Supreme Court to overturn this, if not, Secretaries of State will step in & ensure the new legal standard for” Mr Trump “applies equally to” President Biden.

Speaking to NBC News, Mr Ashcroft said he wrote the post to “remind people of how severe this is.”

He added, “I’m 99 per cent certain the Supreme Court will stop it, but if they don’t, chaos is ahead and we’ve got to avoid it.” The Missouri Republican also told the outlet that he intends to file an amicus brief in an effort to warn the nation’s highest court of the potential ramifications if it upholds the decision.

“If Democrat states are saying we’re not going to let these Republicans run, you bet you’re going to see the same thing happening from Republican states. And it’s not good,” Mr Ashcroft told NBC News.

“If you’re playing a basketball game and the other team doesn’t have to dribble the ball, eventually you’re going to say, ‘Why am I worried about dribbling the ball?’” he said.

When the outlet asked how he would make Mr Biden ineligible for the state’s 2024 ballot under the same standard — insurrection — he replied that the president “let an invasion unstopped into our country from the border.”

This isn’t the first time a state official has threatened to remove the president from the 2024 ballot.

Last month, the Texas lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, also cited the influx of immigrants at the US-Mexico border when he suggested booting Mr Biden from the ballot: “Maybe we should take Joe Biden off the ballot in Texas for allowing 8m people to cross the border since he’s been president, disrupting our state far more than anything anyone else has done in recent history.”

By contrast, California Gov Gavin Newsom is staying clear of the controversial process altogether. Last month, the California Democrat opposed his own lieutenant governor’s call to remove Mr Trump from the state’s primary ballot. He said that while there is “no doubt that Donald Trump is a threat to our liberties and even to our democracy,” in California, “we defeat candidates at the polls. Everything else is a political distraction.”