Can Trump still run for president now that he's a convicted felon?

dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 197 points –

If so, then why?

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Yup! Because that's the law. The original idea was to keep people in power from being able to outmaneuver their opponents by having them arrested. That was back when politicians and corporations had some level of public accountability though.

So felons can run for president, they just can't vote for who they want though?

Debs ran from prison (for the high crime of telling people that WWI was none of our business and people shouldn't enlist to get turned toa pink mist in Belgium) in 1920

As for voting as a felon, that varies state to state. I don't think there's anyplace that allows people to vote from prison, but quite a few states let convicted felons vote once they've completed their sentence and any parole that follows it (and in some states, pay additional fines, which sounds a bit like a poll tax to me, but I'm not one of our nine kritarchs, so what do I know about that sort of thing?)

As for people running for office when they couldn't vote, Elizabeth Cady Stanton ran for office well before she could have voted, and the first woman elected to Congress (Jeanette Rankin) was elected in 1916, several years before women's suffrage was added to the constitution, though her state, Montana, had allowed women to vote already.

Sadly, Florida, where Trump lives, defers to the State of conviction, and in NY, as long as you aren't currently in prison, you can vote.