Lessons from Latin America: How barring Trump from the ballot could backfire 

The Supreme Court will hear arguments this week on both sides of a debate that has steep consequences for the 2024 presidential election as well as the future of American democracy. 

Late last year, Colorado’s Supreme Court and Maine’s secretary of State barred Donald Trump from appearing on those states’ primary ballots. Both decisions point to Section 3 of the Constitution’s 14^th Amendment, which disqualifies those who have participated in insurrection or rebellion against the United States from holding office; they consider the former president responsible for the events in 2021 at the U.S. Capitol often referred to as the January 6 insurrection. 

Some have celebrated the decisions as a victory in the defense of American democracy, preventing an authoritarian candidate from reaching office and subverting democracy from within. Others have denounced them as deeply anti-democratic, depriving Americans of the right to vote for their preferred candidate. Presumably, the first camp sees the move as inoculating against tyranny, but experiences from other electoral contexts suggest that the strategy can backfire. 

An appeal of the Colorado ruling has now reached the Supreme Court, with arguments kicking off on Thursday. While there is no precedent in U.S. history, three experiences in Latin America show the fallacy of barring a highly popular candidate from running for president. These are examples the justices would do well to heed as they consider this monumental case. 

Argentina 

The first example is from Argentina, where a military coup forced President Juan Domingo Perón into exile in 1955. The anti-Peronist sectors regarded the coup — dubbed the Revolución Libertadora, or Liberating Revolution — as a necessary step to achieve and preserve true democracy in Argentina. Because of Perón’s ambivalence toward democracy, semi-fascist disregard toward minority rights, and the opposition’s concern that democratic alternation in power could not be achieved under Perón, the military overthrew the president, banned all Peronist images and symbols, and reinstated a new civilian government through elections in 1958. 

The political system that emerged in Argentina in the aftermath of the coup was democratic in many respects, except that Perón was forbidden from running for president. Much to the chagrin of Perón’s detractors, however, vast sectors of Argentina’s population remained loyal to Perón and his project. Social polarization grew, as did political instability. 

Argentine political scientist Guillermo O’Donnell characterized the country’s experiment with exclusionary democracy as “a futile game no one can win.” Indeed, realizing that democracy without Perón was untenable, Perón was allowed to participate in the 1973 presidential elections, which he handily won.  

Mexico 

The second example is more recent and involves Mexico’s current president. In 2005, then President Vicente Fox attempted to ban political rival Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) from running for president. AMLO was the mayor of Mexico City and the early leader in the polls for the 2006 presidential race. The attorney general’s office charged AMLO with abuse of authority for allegedly ignoring a court order to interrupt the construction of an access road on private property in 2001. Popular protests ensued until the Fox administration backpedaled and the attorney general resigned. 

AMLO lost the 2006 election by a razor-thin margin — 0.56 percent of the vote — but the legalistic maneuver gave credence to his claim that the incumbent had generated an uneven playing field from the beginning. The credibility of Mexico’s elections, which was gradually built with painstaking care since reforms adopted in the mid-’90s, took a major hit overnight and has only deteriorated since. AMLO remained extremely popular and reached the presidency in 2018. 

Brazil 

The third example is from Brazil, whose Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva could not run in that year’s election because of a corruption conviction. Despite evidence that the charges were politically motivated, Lula was sent to jail. His imprisonment further polarized Brazilian society, eroded trust in the country’s democracy, and boosted his popularity — with polls projecting him to win if he were allowed to run. Without Lula in the race, rival Jair Bolsonaro became president, but Lula’s appeal would far from dwindle. After Brazil’s Supreme Court threw out his conviction on jurisdictional grounds and restored his political rights, at age 77 Lula returned to the presidency in 2023. 

To be sure, there are limits to the parallels in these comparisons. Democratic institutions are considerably more established in the U.S. than they were in Brazil or Mexico at the time, and the military has not vetoed any candidates in the U.S., as it did in Argentina. But the historical examples are useful to inform what might happen in the U.S. under a similar scenario of extreme political polarization in which a popular candidate is prevented from seeking the presidency. 

There are three important lessons to draw from these examples of barring candidates in the name of protecting democracy: 

First, it is unlikely that barring popular candidates from running will prevent them from reaching the presidency. Even if such efforts succeed in one election, martyrdom provides an additional popularity boost that is unlikely to fade beyond an electoral cycle — and might even last much longer, as in Argentina or Brazil.   

Second, barring candidates tends to further undermine trust in elections. As the Brazilian and Mexican experiences show, trust in elections is easy to destroy but very difficult to rebuild. 

Third, barring candidates is unlikely to bring stability to the political system. As the Argentine, Brazilian and Mexican experiences suggest, doing so can further polarize society rather than bring down the temperature of politics. 

These considerations should give pause to those seeking to “save democracy” by removing a particular candidate from the ballot. As well-intentioned as the strategy may seem, it is a temporary band-aid at best and adds fuel to polarization and its consequences at worst. In the end, the strategy of using undemocratic means in the name of democracy is likely to render the goal — preventing a candidate from reaching office — even more elusive. 

Gustavo Flores-Macías is professor of government and public policy at Cornell University.