White House from the ‘Big House’: Can Incarcerated People Run for President?
On April 4, 2023, former President Donald Trump was charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying New York business records, committed in order to undermine the integrity of the 2016 presidential election. The charges are related to a series of hush-money payments Trump paid to Stormy Daniels, a second woman who claimed to have had an affair with him, and his former doorman, which he disguised as reimbursements paid to his former attorney, Michael Cohen. Although falsifying business records is traditionally a misdemeanor in New York State, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has charged Trump with Class E felonies because, he argues, their payments were central to a larger scheme to avoid negative press and influence the outcome of the 2016 Election.
President Trump is the first president – former or current – to be charged with a criminal act. Although Trump, who has pleaded not guilty, will not be tried for months, with the 2024 Election looming, it’s understandable why so many Americans have jumped to question Trump’s eligibility for the presidency. After all, persons with felony convictions are barred from the ballot box in 48 states. Due to those state laws, 4.6 million Americans are currently disenfranchised. It stands to reason that running for the presidency must have more restrictions than voting for the president, right? Wrong.
The U.S. Constitution lists only three qualifications for the U.S. presidency. The President must be at least 35 years old, a natural born citizen, and have been a resident of the United States for at least 14 years. There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution or U.S. law that prevents persons convicted of felonies from winning the presidency. More surprisingly, there are no restrictions barring incarcerated persons from running for and becoming the president from behind bars either.
Two men have conducted presidential campaigns while incarcerated: Eugene V. Debs and Lyndon LaRouche. Eugene V. Debs, an American socialist and activist, ran for president from the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary in 1920. Arrested for protesting the World War I draft, Debs campaigned as an unapologetic incarcerated radical; his campaign pins donned the name “Prisoner 9653” in place of his legal name. Although his symbolic campaign won no electors, Debs won 913,693 votes, 3.5% of the national popular vote. In 1992, earning a mere 26,334 votes, Lyndon LaRouche, an American activist of the political fringe, ran for president, despite his incarceration for mail fraud and conspiracy to defraud the Internal Revenue Service. LaRouche has become infamous, not only for his presidential run in 1992, but also for his record-setting feat of running for president eight consecutive times from 1974-2004. Although Debs and LaRouche did not win the presidential election in their respective years, they were completely within their rights to become candidates.
Although incarceration could arguably fall under the conditions in which a president is unable “to discharge the Powers and Duties” of the Office, thereby activating the 25th Amendment’s procedures for presidential succession, if an incarcerated person were to win the presidency, the United States would truly enter unprecedented territory.