evidence: Does the Constitution permit Donald Trump to be on the 2024 Presidential ballot? The question arises because of a long-neglected part of the 14th Amendment. Section Three provides that no person can hold political office if, having taken an oath to support the Constitution as a state or federal official, they "engaged in insurrection or rebellion." Section Three was designed to respond to the danger that former Confederate states might (as indeed they did) elect former Confederates to Congress and pursue politics as the continuation of war by other means. But the century and a half after the Civil War, brought no insurrections, and Section Three lay moribund, an object of only historical interest. January 6, 2021 changed that. At least, it did if you accept the arguments put forward in the University of Pennsylvania law Review by leading conservative originalists William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen and in an article by Federalist Society co-founder Steven Calabresi. Trump engaged in insurrection, they argue, and declaring him ineligible for the Presidency is no more than the Constitution demands. "[T]he case is not even close," Baude and Paulsen declare. "All who are committed to the Constitution should take note and say so." The counterargument, offered by another prominent conservative originalist, Michael McConnell, is that excluding Trump from the ballot is extreme, divisive, and anti-democratic. We should read Section Three as narrowly as we can, he says, in order to "allow the American people to vote for the candidates of their choice."