Colorado Supreme Court barred Trump from ballot: Does this impact Utah?
Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson speaks at the Ken Garff Esports Spring Celebration 2023 at the Jon M. Huntsman Center in Salt Lake City on Friday, March 10, 2023.
Laura Seitz, Deseret News
On Tuesday, Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson posted a video to X explaining that she does not believe the Colorado Supreme Court ruling will affect Utah elections.
Henderson’s video comes the day after the Colorado Supreme Court ruled former President Donald Trump should be barred from the state’s 2024 ballot. The court’s opinion rests on their belief that Trump was in violation of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment due to his involvement in the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment reads:
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
“We conclude that the foregoing evidence, the great bulk of which was undisputed at trial, established that President Trump engaged in insurrection,” the opinion states.
Henderson said she had received questions about how Colorado’s ruling would impact Utah’s elections. “The short answer is it doesn’t have any effect, at least short term, on how we are operating in our state,” she said.
Utah allows individual parties to decide if they’ll have a presidential primary. Henderson explained, “And the Republican Party in the state of Utah has decided not to have a presidential primary. Instead, they are having a party caucus on Super Tuesday, and that is a function of the party and not something that the state has any oversight on.”
By Aug. 31, 2024, parties will have to certify the names of their nominees for president and vice president to the lieutenant governor, Henderson said.
“But for now, the Colorado ruling has no impact, at least at the moment, on how we are going to be operating in the near future,” she said.
