Maine’s top election official bars Donald Trump from ballot

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, cites the Capitol riot in saying the Republican former US president is ineligible to serve again.

Donald Trump was ruled ineligible to hold office because of his actions surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol. Picture: Getty Images

Maine’s top election official on Thursday said former president Donald Trump can’t appear on the state’s primary ballot, escalating a national legal effort to disqualify him from office.

In a 34-page written decision, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, said the Constitution bars a second Trump term because of his actions surrounding the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol following his loss in the 2020 presidential election.

Her decision, in which she found “he is not qualified to hold the office of the President”, comes after Colorado’s highest court ruled last week that Mr Trump is ineligible for that state’s ballot. Both rulings invoked the same section of the post-Civil War 14th Amendment that disqualifies from public office those who swore to defend the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the US.

In Maine, eligibility challenges are first adjudicated administratively. The secretary of state’s ruling, which she issued after holding a public hearing, marks the first time that a state election authority has excluded the 2024 Republican presidential frontrunner from a primary ballot.

In her decision, Ms Bellows said Mr Trump “used a false narrative of election fraud to inflame his supporters” to “prevent a peaceful transfer of power.” She accused him of engaging in “incendiary rhetoric” and failing to take timely action to stop the assault on the Capitol.

“The weight of the evidence makes clear that Mr Trump was aware of the tinder laid by his multi-month effort to delegitimise a democratic election, and then chose to light a match,” she wrote.

Mr Trump has denied engaging in an insurrection and has accused his political opponents of trying to disenfranchise voters with dubious legal arguments.

A Trump campaign spokesman, responding to Ms Bellow’s decision, said it was the election official herself who was guilty of “a hostile assault on American democracy,” calling her “a virulent leftist.”

The spokesman said the campaign would “quickly file a legal objection in state court to prevent this atrocious decision in Maine from taking effect”.

Anti-Trump voters have challenged the former president’s ballot eligibility in dozens of states through lawsuits and administrative petitions. Several Maine residents, including former state senators, brought challenges against Mr Trump. Election officials in several other states, including Democrats in Massachusetts and Oregon, have said they wouldn’t kick Mr Trump off the ballot without a court order.

The US Supreme Court is likely to be the final arbiter on these cases. Colorado Republicans on Wednesday asked judges to reverse the state’s first-of-its-kind judicial ruling, and Mr Trump is expected to file his own appeal.

The Colorado ruling, the Republican petition stated, “poses a severe, immediate, and ongoing threat to the … electoral process throughout the country”.

Maine and Colorado are both holding their presidential primaries on March 5 as part of Super Tuesday and are required to send out ballots to overseas and military voters weeks before then.

Congress drafted Section 3 during Reconstruction to prevent Confederates who rose up in arms against the Union from seizing back power through the ballot box.

Until January 6, 2021, the provision was regarded as a Civil War remnant, largely forgotten and seldom litigated. After the Capitol riot, it got a fresh look from constitutional scholars, including some prominent conservative legal academics who have concluded that it can and should be enforced against Mr Trump.

In Maine, Mr Trump’s lawyers argued that the eligibility challenges go beyond the secretary of state’s authority. State law, his lawyers wrote, limits such claims to more mundane questions about a candidate’s residence and party designation.

State authorities in general aren’t empowered to enforce Section 3 without legislation from Congress authorising such lawsuits, his lawyers said. They also contend that Section 3 may not be applied to a former president.

The Wall Street Journal