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PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Maine’s Democratic secretary of state on Thursday removed former President Donald Trump from the state’s first presidential election under the Constitution’s insurrection clause, becoming the first election official to take unilateral action as the U. S. Supreme Court prepares. on whether Trump is still eligible to return to the 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.
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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 in Maine and in the 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 disadvantaged a presidential candidate in a vote based on Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. However, 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. “
Although Maine has only 4 electoral votes, it is one of two states that divide them. Trump won one of Maine’s electoral votes in 2020, so his withdrawal from the ballot, if he becomes the Republican nominee in the general election, may have been too big. implications in a race that is expected to be by a narrow margin.
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’s vital that it fulfill its official duty.
This earned him praise from former state legislators who filed one of the petitions requiring him for the case.
“Secretary Bellows has shown wonderful courage in her ruling, and we look forward to helping her protect her sensible and correct resolution in court. No elected official is above the law or our Constitution, and today’s resolution reaffirms that highest American principle,” the Republican said. Kimberley Rosen, independent Thomas Saviello and Democrat Ethan Strimling in a statement.
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But other Republicans in the state were outraged.
“The Secretary of State’s resolution would deprive thousands of Maineans of the opportunity to vote for the candidate of their choice, and would be overturned,” U. S. Sen. Susan Collins wrote on the social media site X.
“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.
However, the complaint did not refer only to broad party lines. Jared Golden, a Democrat who represents Maine’s second congressional district that Trump won in 2020, noted on X that he voted to impeach Trump over the Jan. 6 attack and doesn’t think he’ll win next year’s election.
“However, we are a country of laws and therefore, until he is found guilty of the crime of insurrection, he deserves to be allowed to participate in the elections,” Golden wrote.
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 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’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.
Similarly, until Bellows’ decision, all of the state’s most sensible election officials, whether Democrats or Republicans, had rejected requests to exclude Trump from the ballot, saying they did not have the authority to remove him unless ordered to do so by a court. .
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In California, which has the largest number of delegates for the 2024 presidential election, Trump is on the qualified list of applicants released Thursday for the March 5 state primary.
Secretary of State Shirley Weber has faced political tensions in rejecting Trump’s candidacy in the state, added Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, a fellow Democrat who suggested in a Dec. 20 letter that she “explore all legal options” to remove the former president. of his office. Weber later responded that he was guided by the “rule of law” and indicated that the proper position for election disputes was in the courts.
The timing of the U. S. Supreme Court’s ruling is unclear, but both sides need it to be delivered quickly. The Colorado Republican Party appealed the Colorado Superior Court’s ruling on Wednesday, asking for an expedited timeline, and Trump is also expected to appeal within the week. Petitioners in the Colorado case suggested Thursday that the nation’s court adopt an even faster timeline so they can rule before March 5, known as Super Tuesday, when 16 states, including Colorado and Maine, will vote in the presidential election. republicans. nomination. process.
The Superior Court will first have to officially settle the case, but legal experts consider it a certainty. The Section 3 cases seem tailor-made for the Supreme Court, addressing an area of American governance where there is little judicial guidance.
The clause was added in 1868 to keep defeated Confederates from returning to their former positions of power in local and federal government. It prohibits anyone who broke an oath to “support” the Constitution from holding office. The provision was used to bar a wide range of ex-Confederates from positions ranging from local sheriff to Congress, but fell into disuse after an 1872 congressional amnesty for most 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 seat in the House to a socialist who had opposed U. S. involvement in World War I. . But since the Jan. 6 attack, it has been used. has been relaunched.
Last year, he subpoenaed through a court to indict a rural New Mexico county commissioner who entered the Capitol on Jan. 6. A liberal organization attempted to remove Republican Reps. Madison Cawthorn and Marjorie Taylor Greene from the 2022 election under the provision, but Cawthorn lost his primary, so his case was ignored and a ruling ruled in Greene’s favor.
Associated Press Michael R. Blood in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
Associated Press
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