On Dec. 20, 1860, South Carolina seceded from the United States. Over the next several months, 10 more states separated from the union and the federal government had begun the effort to reunite the country by force. Five bloody years later, it was successful.

On June 13, 1866, Congress passed the 14th Amendment, which bestowed citizenship on anyone born in the United States — most notably the recently freed slaves. The amendment had other sections, though, and the amendment’s third section is making the news now.

Section 3 declared that anyone who took an oath to support the Constitution then engaged in insurrection or rebellion against it cannot hold public office. Prior to the secession, many of the Confederacy’s leaders had served as congressmen, as military officers or in other positions where they swore allegiance to the Constitution. This section was intended to prevent them from coming back into power in the nation they’d rebelled against.

The section included a “loophole” whereby a vote of two-thirds of each house of Congress could remove such disability. The 14th Amendment was ratified by the states in 1868, but by 1872 Congress had voted to allow the former Confederates to return to public office.

Between then and 2022 the section was used only once, when Congress refused to seat a socialist accused of giving support to the nation’s enemies in World War I.

On Jan. 6, 2021, a crowd of protesters gathered outside the U.S. Capitol, encouraged by President Donald Trump. The protest turned into a riot and some members of the crowd made their way into the Capitol building. Among them was a county commissioner from New Mexico

In 2022, a state judge in New Mexico removed that county commissioner from office because of his role in the protest.

There is no doubt that the events of Jan. 6, 2021, disrupted the confirmation of states’ votes, and little doubt that doing so was the protesters’ intent. But does that rise to the level of insurrection?

The New Mexico judge said it did, and so does a lawsuit from the Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which has filed suit to remove Trump’s name from the ballot for president based on the same logic.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — the same official who stood up to Trump’s demand that he “find 11,780 votes” so Trump would win Georgia in 2020 — pushed back in an essay published in the Wall Street Journal.

“Invoking the 14th Amendment is merely the newest way of attempting to short-circuit the ballot box,” Raffensperger said. “Since 2018, Georgia has seen losing candidates and their lawyers try to sue their way to victory. It doesn’t work. Stacey Abrams’s claims of election mismanagement following the 2018 election were rejected in court, as were Mr. Trump’s after the 2020 election.

“Mr. Trump might win the nomination and general election. Or he could lose. The outcomes should be determined by the people who show up to make their preference known in primaries (including Georgia’s on March 12) and the general election on Nov. 5. A process that denies voters their chance to be the deciding factor in the nomination and election process would erode the belief in our uniquely American representative democracy.”

Raffensperger is exactly right.

Trump has been indicted in four cases, totaling 91 felony charges — but none of those charges are insurrection or rebellion. An indictment is more than a mere accusation, but it is less than a conviction. As with any other defendant, the law must consider him innocent until he’s proven guilty.

Short of a conviction, the voters must be able to decide who will lead them or our system is not a democracy.