Rhode Island bill to keep Trump off 2020 ballot unless he releases tax returns - Polidicks

http://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/393581-rhode-island-bill-would-keep-trump-off-2020-ballot-unless-he-filed-his Rhode Island’s state Senate passed a bill this week that would keep candidates off the presidential ballot in their state if they don’t release five years' worth of tax returns, according to the Providence Journal. State Sen. Gayle Goldin (D), who sponsored the bill, noted that every presidential candidate since Richard Nixon had released their tax returns voluntarily until President Trump ran for office. Trump has repeatedly claimed that he cannot release his tax returns because he is under audit, but the IRS said an audit does not prevent a candidate from releasing their personal tax information.Goldin argued that “tax returns provide essential information about candidates’ conflicts of interest.” Tax returns, she continued, are vital information a voter needs to know about a candidate at the ballot box. The bill passed the Democratic-majority Senate on a 34-3 vote. It now moves to the Rhode Island state House.

Surprising that it's taken this long to formally make this a law

On one hand, I feel as if this is the right measure for Trump, but on the other, I feel as if it opens the door for abuse for future elections. Imagine Alabama keeping Obama off the ballot until he released his birth certificate or something of the like.

So is this legal? Can a state keep a candidate off the ballots for any reason it chooses? Because that can be easily used to anyone's advantage.

States can define their rules for eligibility. A very common requirement is to need a certain number of signatures of residents, to keep crazy loners from clogging up the ballot. States can't just do whatever they want - any law banning, say, non-christian people from appearing on a state's ballot would be instantly found unconstitutional - but a pretty persuasive case could be made that it's important we know what potential conflicts of interest a candidate may have. Obama released his birth certificate like twenty times. But, as always, conspiracy theorists refused to believe actual evidence. A requirement to affirmatively prove that you meet eligibility requirements (age + natural-born citizenship) would not be prima facie unlawful. I think courts would only have a problem with it if it were enforced unevenly - refusing to accept a genuine birth certificate, for instance.

This sets a fucking TERRIBLE precedent. Imagine if next election a ton of states removed the top Democrat from their ballot and the conservative media spun it as "Rhode Island did it first and HYPOCRITE LIBERALS supported it!" No, we should not allow this.

While in Obama's case it was pretty blatantly because he's black, I don't see an inherent problem with this. After all, the US president is supposed to be a US citizen.

I would imagine that this and Marylands similar law would be struck down in the courts, but there is not much precedent here and that is just my assumption. Meanwhile though it's pretty funny to read some reactions to the idea of forcing Trump to play by the same rules as everyone else.

SCOTUS will probably strike it down as unconstitutional As much as I like transparency, this could cause serious escalation that could endanger our democracy.

I think you're right but for the wrong reason. What is to stop a government from refusing to recognize legitimate paperwork or delaying it past a deadline and blaming it on the bureaucracy("See? We told you we need less government")

I agree with the spirit of this, but there is no way I could support it or want to see it implemented. Just thinking about the door this opens gives me a REALLY bad feeling.

If a democrat decides they don't need to release their tax return they can go get fucked

He did. Several times. Each time they just refused to believe him, and refused to believe it was a real, legitimate certificate.

I can understand this line of reasoning, but I think it would only apply to truly arbitrary criteria. If a candidate says that they will do something but never follows through, then wouldn't this simply be holding them accountable? At the very least it sends the message that telling bald-faced lies can potentially be met with some form of consequence, even if it's not necessarily criminal punishment.

"What if they prevented obama from being on the ballot until he did something that he actually did" is a incredibly weird what if scenario.

You guys really missed my point, looking more at the example rather than the context of what I said before that.

You really missed my point too then. There are completely reasonable expectations for presidential candidates. Proving they're American is one. And while it's not laid down in law (though it should be) releasing their tax returns is an established thing for presidential candidates to do. As long as they're not going for completely arbitrary bullshit there is no problem whatsoever.

Not that I want to defend Trump, but I don't see how released tax returns make any different. All presidential candidates are fantastically wealthy more than the average American.

It's not their wealth that's even relevant there. It's a good reflection of their financial dealings and how likely they are to try and enrich themselves and their buddies as well as how shady they are. It's a matter of transparency.

the only issue I have is that states like Texas or some other conservative bastion might start demanding stuff from liberal candidates and this could start a slippery slope downward of candidates only running on the ballot of states they will win then, or just challenge these to the SCOTUS I do think though somebody needed to stand up on this tax dodge bullshit of Trump though

Stuff like this has been public information in Finland for like 100 years already. Each year the tax receipts are made public and everyone who made more than 150k gets his/her name published in papers as top earners are listed. You can even ask the tax offices for information about how much your neighbor made. I think its a good system that promotes openness and I don't understand why that information is such a big deal there in U.S

Iirc it's usually because a lot of high income earners do some shady stuff when it comes to taxes. Tax evasion is usually common. The ironic Republican phrase " Why are you hiding stuff if you've done nothing wrong?"

What stops me from saying in law that you must wear clown shoes in order to be on ballet?

Discussing your salary with coworkers is extremely taboo in the U.S., and I believe some employers may even punish you for doing so.

The courts would almost certainly reject that on the principle of rational basis. Laws may restrict freedom only if they are rationally related to a legitimate government interest. There are varying levels of scrutiny based on how the right is being restricted, but "candidates must wear comedic footwear" wouldn't meet any of them. Should this bill be passed into law, I'm sure GOP lawyers will be making the argument that releasing tax records serves no public good. Depending on exactly what level of scrutiny the courts apply, they may or may not succeed. There is at least some basic logic behind "voters should know if a candidate has conflicts of interest" as a justification.

The man has like 45% apporval ratings, your optimism is completely misplaced here

also we still have no idea what financial dealings trump is involved in or what conflicts of interest he has, and its even more important to know this as ethics laws generally don't apply to him

If Trump can't be made to release his tax returns in any other way, it's probably a good idea to make it a requirement. And considering it was already a tradition for candidates to release their tax returns, I don't think it would lead to other arbitrary requirements suddenly showing up to lock out someone. The fact that he got away with flat out lying and saying that he couldn't release them, that he would release them, and that people weren't interested in seeing them, is honestly insane. Considering how much good it would do his "no collusion" claim if he released clean tax returns, I'm not sure how much more obvious it could possibly get that he's hiding something significant.

He did release his birth certificate.

Well not wanting to kill the ballet industry presumably. But more seriously: People arne't saying any arbitrary demands are okay. They're saying that reasonable ones are fine. There's not really much of a slippery slope here to be worried about.