Former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump attends a 2024 presidential election campaign event at Sportsman Boats in Summerville, South Carolina, US September 25, 2023.
Sam Wolfe | Reuters
CAMDEN, Maine — Maine’s top election official made the decision Thursday Donald Trump is constitutionally ineligible to appear on the state primary ballot next yearwhich is fueling a national effort to disqualify the former president over his attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
The decision by Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, follows a bombshell decision by the Colorado Supreme Court last week ended the 14th Amendment to the Constitution barring Trump from serving in office again for his role in the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
However, Bellows’ office said his decision will not be implemented until the courts weigh in, “given the compressed timeframe, the novel constitutional questions involved, the importance of this case, and the looming deadlines in the preparation of the ballot.”
In a 34-page decisionBellows wrote that Trump’s actions on January 6 made him unfit to lead.
“The weight of the evidence makes it clear that Mr. Trump knew the tinder laid by his months-long effort to delegitimize a democratic election, and then chose to light a fight,” he wrote, adding that “he used of a false narrative. of election fraud to galvanize his supporters and direct them to the Capitol to prevent the certification of the 2020 election and the peaceful transfer of power.”
Trump is expected to appeal the decision and others like it to the US Supreme Court, which he will the issue probably needs to be fixed. In the meantime, state election officials and lower courts have been forced to wrestle with the unprecedented constitutional question on their own.
In a statement immediately after Maine’s decision, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said a court appearance was imminent.
“We will quickly file a legal challenge in state court to prevent this draconian decision in Maine from taking effect,” he said.
Cheung also followed Bellows.
Secretary of State Shenna Bellows speaks at an event, Jan. 4, 2023, in Augusta, Maine.
Robert F. Bukaty | AP
“The Maine Secretary of State is a former ACLU attorney, a virulent leftist and a hyper-partisan Biden-supporting Democrat who decided to interfere in the presidential election on behalf of Crooked Joe Biden,” he said. “We are witnessing, in real-time, the attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter.”
Trump has asked that Bellows recuse himself from the case, arguing that he is too partisan — he is a Democratic former state senator — and too biased because he has said publicly that he looked into the Jan. 6 attack. as an “insurrection.”
So far, most courts have sided with Trump, including recent decisions Michigan, Arizona and Minnesota ruling against citizen-led petitions to disqualify him and affirm Trump’s right to appear on ballots in those states.
Trump denounced efforts to remove him from the ballot as politically motivated attempts to undemocratically disenfranchise him and his supporters.
At issue is Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which was written after the Civil War to prevent former Confederate officers from holding office in the newly united states. The clause barred from public office any former official who took an oath to the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion.”
A Colorado court ruled that Trump should be considered an insurrectionist for inciting violence in the lead-up to January 6, although it did not implement the decision immediately, hoping to appeal to the US Supreme Court.
Although the current cases are related to whether Trump can appear on Republican primary ballots, they will lay the groundwork for potentially removing him from the ballot in the next November general election if they are upheld. .
The effort to disqualify Trump under the 14th Amendment was largely ignored until the Colorado decision, but the stakes are now higher as other states consider similar arguments with little time left. remaining
Maine and Colorado will hold their primaries on Super Tuesday, March 5, but federal law requires state officials to send ballots to overseas military service members and others 45 days before election, which means ballots have to be ready in January.
Politically, strategists in both parties expect the legal case against Trump to ultimately collapse and say efforts to disqualify him are likely. only serves to energize his supporters and fuel his claims that he is being targeted by a vast conspiracy of powerful elites.
Maine, generally a reliably blue state, is one of only two states that divides its Electoral College votes by congressional district. Trump won Maine’s rural 2nd Congressional District in 2016 and 2020 and is looking to win it again next year. The state as a whole has four electoral votes.
