Now that a New York jury has convicted former President Donald Trump on all 34 felony charges of falsifying business records, the next natural question is whether a convicted felon can run for president.
The United States Constitution sets out three requirements for presidential candidates. Candidates must:
- Being a natural-born citizen.
- Be 35 years of age or older.
- Have resided in the U.S. for at least 14 years.
Trump meets all three of these criteria. Perhaps there is another test in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which says that anyone who has previously been sworn in and participated in an insurrection cannot be an officer of the United States. However, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that Congress would need to pass a special law to invoke this prohibition. That's not likely to happen anytime soon.
Can Trump still vote?
That depends on the state. Each state sets its own rules. Trump is currently a Florida resident, and Florida voters overwhelmingly approved a referendum in 2018 that reinstated the right to vote for convicted felons.
In an interview with CNN, Neal Boltz, vice president of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, an organization that helps restore rights to former inmates, predicted that Trump would have little trouble voting in Florida because the state actually has voting rights. Whether a felon can vote is subject to the jurisdiction of the felony conviction. In New York, a law was passed in 2021 making all convicted felons who are not incarcerated eligible to register to vote.
Even if a judge ultimately seeks to sentence Trump to prison, it is highly unlikely that Trump will exhaust his right to appeal a conviction before Election Day. If Trump is somehow convicted of one of the two federal criminal cases against him, Before Election Day, that might be a different story.
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