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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.
absolutely.
And there’s a more complicated question: Can Trump, a felon, vote for himself? Probably.
Let’s start with a simple question…
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.
There is also precedent for a presidential campaign, even if unsuccessful, being run from a prison cell.
Socialist Party leader Eugene Debs campaigned for the presidency in 1920 from a federal prison in Atlanta, where he was serving a 10-year sentence for sedition. He had urged Americans to oppose the draft in World War I.
The Supreme Court upheld Debs’ conviction in that case, arguing that he was convicted not for resisting the draft, but for encouraging others not to comply. The decision keeping Debs in prison was written by then-Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes just a few months before his famous policy shift on free speech in the United States, which led to today’s view of the First Amendment.
Thomas Dougherty, a professor of American studies at Brandeis University, wrote about Debs last year, noting that he remained in prison until the votes were cast and counted. He received about 1 million votes, more than 3% of the total vote. Debs remained in prison even after the Sedition Act was repealed. Then-President Woodrow Wilson refused to pardon him. Wilson’s successor and Debs’ rival in 1920, Warren G. Harding, commuted Debs’ sentence in 1921.
Now, here’s a more difficult question…
it depends.
Whether Trump will have the right to vote in Florida in the November election will depend on whether he is sentenced to prison and whether he has completed his sentence by the time of the election.
Each state sets its own rules: Vermont and Maine allow felons to vote in prison, and several states are moving to allow felons on parole to vote.
Trump is currently a Florida resident, and Florida voters in 2018 overwhelmingly supported a referendum to restore voting rights to convicted felons. But Republican lawmakers in control of the state government first delayed and then made conditions imposed on felons by requiring them to pay all fines and fees associated with their convictions.
I spoke with Neal Boltz, vice president of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, an organization that helps former inmates get their rights restored. He said that Florida is actually 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.
Learn more from the Campaign Legal Center.
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.
As CNN previously reported, other issues exist for many incarcerated felons in Florida that don’t apply to Trump: For starters, there’s no clearinghouse for data on the fees required, which has led to confusion and discourages many from voting.
“There are still a lot of people who are confused about their eligibility, which is why we’re working with states and election experts to improve the system,” Boltz told me, “because people need to know at the very start of the election process whether they’re eligible.”
Boltz said the organization is working with the state to make it much easier for people to verify their eligibility.
CNN’s Tierney Sneed contributed to this report.
