Maine strips Trump from the ballot, inflaming legal war over his candidacy

Source: Politico | December 28, 2023 | Zach Montellaro

Activists and voters have filed numerous lawsuits around the country claiming the former president is barred from office under the “insurrection clause.”

Maine’s top election official ejected former President Donald Trump from the state’s ballot on Thursday, declaring him ineligible to serve as president because of his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress.

The ruling by Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, is certain to inflame a roaring national debate over whether the Republican presidential frontrunner should be allowed to hold power again.

The decision makes Maine the second state in two weeks to disqualify Trump’s candidacy due to the constitutional bar on officeholders who supported or “engaged in insurrection or rebellion.” Last week the Colorado Supreme Court barred Trump from the state’s Republican primary ballot under a similar interpretation of the 14th Amendment.

Bellows’ decision on Thursday increases the pressure on the U.S. Supreme Court to step in and ultimately decide Trump’s fate — as the Colorado GOP petitioned the justices this week to do.

Unlike the Colorado ruling, this one comes from an individual officeholder affiliated with the Democratic Party. And Maine, unlike Colorado, has been a presidential battleground in recent years; under an unusual state law, it cast one of its Electoral College votes for Trump in both 2016 and 2020.

Trump was quick to attack the decision, with an aide calling it “partisan election interference.” But his removal from the ballot in two states remains a stark illustration of his deep legal and political vulnerabilities.

Bellows, who made the call in Maine because state law requires the secretary to adjudicate ballot challenges to candidates’ eligibility, defended her decision in her determination.

“I am mindful that no Secretary of State has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access based on Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment,” Bellows wrote. “I am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection.”

The decision will almost assuredly be appealed by Trump. But by becoming the second state to kick Trump off the ballot, it marks a major milestone for the effort by activists to bar Trump from seeking the Oval Office again — breaking out of the confines from an isolated incident in one state to the beginning of a pattern.

Bellows, at times, offered forceful arguments around Trump’s political conduct as a defense of her decision.

“Trump’s occasional requests that rioters be peaceful and support law enforcement do not immunize his actions,” she wrote. “Trump was aware of the tinder laid by his multi-month effort to delegitimize a democratic election, and then chose to light a match.””

She did, however, pause her own decision to strike Trump from the ballot in the state pending an appeal to the state judiciary.

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