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Maine bars Trump from 2024 presidential primary ballot | AP News
NICHOLAS RICCARDI, DAVID SHARP

December 28, 2023

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) - Maine's Democratic secretary of state on Thursday removed former President Donald Trump from the state's presidential
primary ballot under the Constitution's insurrection clause, becoming the
first election official to take action unilaterally as the U.S. Supreme
Court is poised to decide whether Trump remains eligible to continue his campaign.

The decision by Secretary of State Shenna Bellows follows a ruling earlier
this month by the Colorado Supreme Court that booted Trump from the ballot there under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. That decision has been stayed until the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether Trump is barred by the Civil War-era provision, which prohibits those who "engaged in insurrection"
from holding office.

The Trump campaign said it would appeal Bellows' decision to Maine's state courts, and Bellows suspended her ruling until that court system rules on
the case. In the end, it is likely that the nation's highest court will
have the final say on whether Trump appears on the ballot there and in the other states.

Bellows found that Trump could no longer run for his prior job because his
role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol violated Section 3,
which bans from office those who "engaged in insurrection." Bellows made
the ruling after some state residents, including a bipartisan group of
former lawmakers, challenged Trump's position on the ballot.

"I do not reach this conclusion lightly," Bellows wrote in her 34-page decision. "I am mindful that no Secretary of State has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access based on Section 3 of the
Fourteenth Amendment. I am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection."

The Trump campaign immediately slammed the ruling. "We are witnessing, in real-time, the attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement
of the American voter," campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a
statement.

Thursday's ruling demonstrates the need for the nation's highest court,
which has never ruled on Section 3, to clarify what states can do.

"It is clear that these decisions are going to keep popping up, and inconsistent decisions reached (like the many states keeping Trump on the ballot over challenges) until there is final and decisive guidance from
the U.S. Supreme Court," Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California-Los Angeles, wrote in response to the Maine decision. "It seems
a certainty that SCOTUS will have to address the merits sooner or later."

While Maine has just four electoral votes, it's one of two states to split them. Trump won one of Maine's electors in 2020, so having him off the
ballot there, should he emerge as the Republican general election
candidate, could have outsized implications in a race that is expected to
be narrowly decided.

That's in contrast to Colorado, which Trump lost by 13 percentage points
in 2020 and where he wasn't expected to compete in November if he wins the Republican presidential nomination.

In her decision, Bellows acknowledged that the U.S. Supreme Court will
probably have the final word but said it was important she did her
official duty.

That won her praise from the former state lawmakers who filed one of the petitions forcing her to consider the case.

"Secretary Bellows showed great courage in her ruling, and we look forward
to helping her defend her judicious and correct decision in court. No
elected official is above the law or our constitution, and today's ruling reaffirms this most important of American principles," Republican Kimberly Rosen, independent Thomas Saviello and Democrat Ethan Strimling said in a statement.

The Trump campaign on Tuesday requested that Bellows disqualify herself
from the case because she'd previously tweeted that Jan. 6 was an "insurrection" and bemoaned that Trump was acquitted in his impeachment
trial in the U.S. Senate after the capitol attack. She refused to step
aside.

"My decision was based exclusively on the record presented to me at the
hearing and was in no way influenced by my political affiliation or
personal views about the events of Jan. 6, 2021," Bellows told the
Associated Press Thursday night.

Bellows is a former head of the Maine chapter of the American Civil
Liberties Union. All seven of the justices of the Colorado Supreme Court,
which split 4-3 on whether to become the first court in history to declare
a presidential candidate ineligible under Section 3, were appointed by Democrats. Two Washington, D.C.-based liberal groups have launched the
most serious prior challenges to Trump, in Colorado and a handful of other states.

That's led Trump to contend the dozens of lawsuits nationwide seeking to
remove him from the ballot under Section 3 are a Democratic plot to end
his campaign. But some of the most prominent advocates have been
conservative legal theorists who argue that the text of the Constitution
makes the former president ineligible to run again, just as if he failed
to clear the document's age threshold - 35 years old - for the office.

Likewise, until Bellows' decision, every top state election official,
whether Democrat or Republican, had rejected requests to bar Trump from
the ballot, saying they didn't have the power to remove him unless ordered
to do so by a court.



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Anyone that isn't confused doesn't really
understand the situation.
~Edward R. Murrow USA WWII Correspondent ==================================================

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