Some local politicians and political experts say the Colorado Supreme Court made a historically unprecedented decision Tuesday in its ruling to ban former president Donald Trump from the state’s presidential primary ballot.

The United States has not been this polarized since the Civil War, former Republican Washington Secretary of State Kim Wyman said Tuesday evening. When she heard the news of Colorado’s decision, Wyman said she was “speechless.”

Each state has its unique way to choose presidential candidates. Some states have caucuses, while other states have primaries. Three states previously ruled against litigation to take Trump off their respective ballots. The issue is pending in many other states.

Deep divisions along party lines today pose the biggest threat to democracy the United States has seen in centuries, said Cornell Clayton, director of the Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service at Washington State University.

Clayton said in an interview that he is almost certain the U.S. Supreme Court will overturn Colorado’s decision to ban Trump from the ballot. A central question in the case is whether the original framers of the Constitution intended the president to be considered an officer of the United States.

“There’s overwhelming evidence to show that the original framers considered the president an officer,” Clayton said. “It’s going to be very hard to write an originalist opinion finding the 14th Amendment does not consider the president to be an officer of the United States.”

Clayton added that resounding scholarly legal opinion considers the president to be an officer of the United States, and an overturn of Colorado’s decision would mean the conservative-led Supreme Court would be going against its standard belief that the Constitution should be enforced the way it’s written.

“I think it would behoove everybody to read this opinion – whether you support Trump or don’t support Trump – in terms of thinking about who we’re voting for,” Clayton said. “This is an extremely educational moment for the country. It should lead Americans to understand that the only thing that unites a country so deeply polarized is the Constitution, or better put, the rules of the game.”

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A team of five researchers from Washington State University and the University of Arkansas surveyed more than 1,200 registered lobbyists in each of the country’s 50 states, asking them questions related to how the legislators in their state generally behaved towards one another. The results show the extent to which state legislators behave in a civil manner among themselves is related to how effective they are at passing legislation.

“We were all surprised by the strength of the relationship between civility and performance,” said Bill Schreckhise, lead author and chair of the UA Department of Political Science. “Our findings indicate that the states where legislators were the most civil towards each other passed roughly twice the number of bills that the most uncivil legislatures passed.”

Aggregating the state lobbyists’ impressions by state, the researchers then determined which states had legislators who were more civil to each other, and which states’ legislatures were seen as being less civil among themselves. They then compared each legislatures’ overall level of civility with how many bills were passed, how much significant legislation was enacted, and whether the state legislatures passed their important budget bills on time in recent years.

“At a time when the tenor of our political discourse is growing less civil, including that of our elected leaders, our findings show that political incivility is having a real effect on our nation’s ability to govern — both in Congress and in our state capitols,” added co-author Nicholas Lovrich, of Washington State University’s School of Politics, Philosophy and Public Affairs. “Our study shows that such behavior has very real-world consequences for governance.”

The article “Legislative Civility, Gridlock, Polarization, and Productivity” was published in the State Politics & Policy Quarterly journal (Cambridge University Press) on behalf of the American Political Science Association. WSU co-authors include Benjamin Francis in the Department of Psychology.

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Heading into election day this week, school board candidates in Spokane’s surrounding suburbs are raising money not often seen for a local volunteer board.

Though they were once sleepy contests where longtime incumbents often sailed to re-election without a challenger, they have become some of the most hotly contested races. In Eastern Washington, such attention is not focused on Spokane itself but its surrounding suburbs of Mead and Central Valley.

The race between Mead School Board candidates Jaime Stacy and Jennifer Killman has amassed more money than any other school board contest in Washington state this year.

The tens of thousands of dollars in each campaign’s coffers underscore the ideological – if not partisan – tint of the campaign. Stacy is a self-identified progressive focused on diversity and inclusion, while Killman is endorsed by the Spokane GOP and skeptical of the way race is addressed in public schools.

Cornell Clayton, Washington State University political science professor and director of the Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service, said the large campaign war chests in Mead and elsewhere in Eastern Washington are an example of how the previously “sleepy endeavor” of a local school board election has become the “current battleground for the culture wars.”

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