Maine’s Democratic secretary of state on Thursday removed former President Donald Trump from the state’s No. 1 poll under the Constitution’s insurrection clause, becoming the first election official to take unilateral action as the U. S. Supreme Court decides whether Trump remains eligible to return. to the country. White House.
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.
Trump’s crusader has said it will appeal Bellows’ ruling in Maine state courts, and Bellows has deferred its ruling until the court formulates regulations on the case. Ultimately, the nation’s highest court will most likely have the final say on whether Trump is in the polls in Maine and other states.
Bellows found that Trump may no longer run because of his past because his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U. S. Capitol violated Article 3, which prohibits those who “participated in the insurrection” from holding ArrayBellows took the measure after some state. Residents, as well as a bipartisan organization of former lawmakers, challenged Trump’s stance on the election.
“I do not come to this conclusion lightly,” Bellows wrote in his 34-page decision. “I am aware that no secretary of state has ever denied a presidential candidate to stand for election on the basis of Article 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. But I am also aware that no presidential candidate has ever participated in an insurrection. “
The Trump campaign criticized the move. ” We are witnessing in real time an attempt to borrow an election and disenfranchise the American voter,” campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement.
Legal experts said Thursday’s ruling demonstrates the need for the country’s court, which has never ruled on Article 3, to explain what states can do.
“Clearly, those decisions will continue to look like and inconsistent decisions will be made (such as the fact that many states keep Trump in the polls in the event of a challenge) until there are final and decisive rules from the U. S. Supreme Court. “said Rick Hasen, an attorney. A professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote in reaction to Maine’s decision. “It’s certain that, sooner or later, SCOTUS will have to take a look at the merits. “
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.
This is in contrast to Colorado, which Trump lost by thirteen percentage points in 2020 and where he is expected to run in November if he wins the Republican presidential nomination.
In his ruling, Bellows said the U. S. Supreme Court will most likely have the final say, but said it is vital that it fulfill its official duty.
That earned him praise from former state lawmakers who filed one of the petitions forcing him to participate in 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 Kimberley Rosen, independent Thomas Saviello and Democrat Ethan Strimling said in a statement.
But the state’s Republicans were outraged.
“This is a deceptive resolution that mimics third global dictatorships,” Maine Republican Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham said in a statement. “This will not stand up to legal scrutiny. People have a right to have their leaders without reckless resolutions made by partisan hackers.
The criticism wasn’t just along normal partisan lines, though. Rep. Jared Golden, a Democrat who represents Maine’s 2nd congressional district that Trump won in 2020, noted on the social media site X that he’d voted to impeach Trump for the Jan. 6 attack and doesn’t believe he should win next year’s election.
“However, we are a country of laws and therefore, until you are found guilty of the crime of insurrection, you will be allowed to participate in the elections,” Golden wrote.
Tuesday’s Trump crusade demanded that Bellows recuse himself from the case because he had tweeted in the past that Jan. 6 was an “insurrection” and lamented that Trump was acquitted in his impeachment trial in the U. S. Senate following the attack on the Capitol. She refused to retreat.
“My resolution was based solely on the record presented to me at the hearing and in no way influenced my political association or private perspectives on the events of Jan. 6, 2021,” Bellows told The Associated Press late Thursday.
Bellows is a former head of the Maine bankruptcy of the American Civil Liberties Union. The seven justices of the Colorado Supreme Court, who split through a 4-3 vote on whether it deserves to be the first court in history to declare a presidential candidate ineligible. Under Article 3, they were appointed by the Democrats. Two liberal groups based in Washington, D. C. , have thrown the most demanding situations at Trump, Colorado and a handful of other states.
That prompted Trump to claim that the dozens of lawsuits filed nationwide to remove him from the polls under Section 3 constitute a Democratic plot to end his campaign. But some of the most prominent supporters are conservative legal theorists who argue that the text of the Constitution makes the former president ineligible to run again, as if he had not reached the age threshold set in the document — 35 — to exercise. their functions.
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.
The timing of the U. S. Supreme Court’s ruling is unclear, but both sides need it delivered quickly. The Colorado Republican Party appealed the Colorado Superior Court’s ruling on Wednesday, asking for an expedited timetable, and Trump is also expected to appeal within a week. The petitioners in the Colorado case suggested Thursday that the nation’s court adopt an even faster timeline so it can rule before March 5, known as Super Tuesday, when 16 states, including Colorado and Maine, will vote for Republican presidential elections. nomination. process.
The High Court will first have to reach an official settlement on the case, but legal experts consider that a certainty. Section 3 cases seem tailor-made for the Supreme Court, addressing a realm of American governance where there is little judicial guidance.
The clause added in 1868 to prevent defeated Confederates from returning to their former positions of strength in local and federal government. It prohibits anyone who has violated his oath to “defend” the Constitution from holding office. The provision used to ban a wide diversity of former Confederates from holding positions ranging from local sheriff to Congress, but fell into disuse after a congressional amnesty in 1872 for the maximum number of former Confederates.
Legal historians claim that the only time this provision was used in the 20th century was in 1919, when it was cited to deny a House seat to a socialist who had opposed U. S. involvement in World War I. But since the Jan. 6 attack, it has been used. It has been relaunched.
Last year, it was cited by a court to remove a rural New Mexico County Commissioner who had entered the Capitol on Jan. 6. One liberal group tried to remove Republican Reps. Madison Cawthorn and Marjorie Taylor Greene from the 2022 ballot under the provision, but Cawthorn lost his primary so his case was thrown out, and a judge ruled for Greene.
Some critics of the motion to exclude Trump warn that the provision could be weaponized in unforeseen ways.
They point out that conservatives could simply argue, for example, that Vice President Kamala Harris was also fired from office because she raised bail money from other people arrested in the riots that followed the 2020 killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police.
The Colorado plaintiffs presented old evidence that even giving small amounts of cash to those seeking to join the Confederacy was a floor for prohibition under Section 3. Why, critics ask, wouldn’t this apply to Democrats like Harris today?
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