by Maine on Thursday became the second state to exclude Donald J. Trump from its primary voting after its top elections official ruled that the former president’s efforts to remain in power after the 2020 election made him ineligible. to occupy the position again.
Hours later, his counterpart in California announced that Trump would remain on the ballot in the country’s most populous state, where election officials have limited power to remove candidates.
Maine’s official, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, wrote in her decision that Trump did not qualify for the ballot because of his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. A handful of citizens had challenged his eligibility on the grounds that he had incited an insurrection and thus had been barred from running for president again under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.
“I am aware that no Secretary of State has ever deprived a presidential candidate of access to the polls based on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. However, I am also aware that no presidential candidate has ever participated in an insurrection before,” wrote Ms. Bellows, a Democrat.
Bellows’ decision follows a ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court last week to keep Trump off the state’s Republican primary ballot.
The decisions in Maine and Colorado underscore national tensions over democracy, access to the ballot box and the rule of law. They also add urgency to calls for the U.S. Supreme Court to become involved in the politically explosive dispute over Trump’s eligibility.
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said Thursday night that both the Maine and Colorado rulings were “partisan election interference efforts” that constituted “a hostile assault on American democracy.”
Just weeks before the first votes are cast in the 2024 election, lawyers on both sides are asking the nation’s highest court to provide guidance on an obscure clause in a constitutional amendment enacted after the Civil War, which is in the center of the attempt to prevent Trump from running for the White House for the third time.
Courts in two other states, Minnesota and Michigan, have ruled that election officials cannot stop the Republican Party from including Trump on its primary ballots.
The Michigan Supreme Court concluded Wednesday that an appeals court had correctly decided that political parties should be able to determine which candidates are eligible to run for president.
Another court decision is expected in Oregon, where the same group that filed the lawsuit in Michigan is also seeking to have the courts remove Trump from the ballot there, although Oregon Secretary of State refused to remove it in response to a previous challenge.
In California, Secretary of State Shirley Weber, a Democrat, faced a Thursday deadline to certify the official slate of candidates so local election officials could begin preparing ballots for the upcoming election.
He had indicated in recent days that he was leaning toward keeping Trump on the ballot based on his interpretation of California law, despite a late request from the lieutenant governor to explore ways to remove him.
The legal cases are based on a Reconstruction-era constitutional amendment intended to prohibit Confederate officials from serving in the United States government. The provision, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, disqualifies from holding office people who “engage in an insurrection or rebellion.”
Over the years, the courts and Congress have done little to clarify how that standard should be applied. As legal challenges mount, election officials and judges across the country find themselves in largely uncharted waters as they wait for the Supreme Court to provide guidance.
The case would be the most politically consequential matter before the Supreme Court since it decided the disputed 2000 election in favor of President George W. Bush. Since then, the court has become much more conservative, largely as a result of the three justices Trump appointed as president.
Trump and his lawyers have called efforts to exclude him from the polls a backdoor tactic by Democrats who fear facing him at the polls.
The groups leading the disqualification efforts argue that the former president’s attempts to subvert the will of voters in 2020 justify extraordinary measures to protect American democracy.
Ms. Bellows, the official in Maine charged with considering the petition in that state, is the state’s first female secretary of state and a former state senator. She is also the former executive director of the nonprofit Maine Holocaust and Human Rights Center and the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine.
In his 34-page decision, Bellows wrote that Trump’s petition to appear on Maine’s ballot was invalid because he falsely stated on his candidate consent form that he was qualified to serve as president. He found that no, he wrote, because “the record establishes that Mr. Trump, over several months culminating on January 6, 2021, used a false narrative of election fraud to inflame his supporters and direct them.” to prevent the peaceful transfer of power.
It also concluded that Trump “was aware of the likelihood of violence and at least initially supported its use, as he encouraged it with inflammatory rhetoric and took no timely action to stop it.”
Legal experts say the scope of a Supreme Court decision on the issue would determine whether these challenges will be handled quickly or play out over months.
A ruling that Trump’s conduct cannot be construed as a violation of the 14th Amendment would effectively close pending challenges in several states. A more limited ruling on the Colorado case could allow Trump to remain on the state’s primary ballot, while giving lawyers who question his eligibility a chance to argue that he should be kept off the general election ballot. .
Among the Maine petitioners was Ethan Strimling, a former Portland mayor and Democratic state lawmaker who filed a challenge along with two other former Maine lawmakers.
“Secretary Bellows showed great courage in her ruling and we look forward to helping her defend her judicious and correct decision in court,” they said in a statement Thursday. “No elected official is above the law or our Constitution, and today’s ruling reaffirms the most important of American principles.”
Mr. Trump can appeal Ms. Bellows’ decision to the Maine Superior Court within five days. His order will not take effect until the court rules on an appeal, which Trump’s campaign says he intends to file soon. The Republican primaries in Maine and Colorado are scheduled for March 5, known as Super Tuesday because many states hold primaries that day.
Challenges to Trump’s ballot access have been filed in more than 30 states in recent weeks, largely through the courts. But due to a quirk of Maine’s Constitution, registered voters must first file a petition with the Secretary of State.
Ms. Bellows heard arguments on three of those petitions on December 15.
After the Colorado decision, Trump’s lawyers argued in new papers filed in Maine that the Colorado ruling should be irrelevant there because the two states had different laws and standards, and because Trump did not have a fair opportunity to litigate the facts in Colorado. . They also maintained that the secretary of state lacked the authority to exclude him from the vote.
“The constitution reserves exclusively to the Electoral College and Congress the power to determine whether a person can hold the office of president,” they argued in the document presented at the end of last week.
Richard L. Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles and an expert on election law, said the Maine decision illustrates the power of the Colorado court’s ruling to pave the way for similar decisions.
“It takes a lot of courage to disqualify a major candidate, but once the Colorado court did it and brought the matter into the public light, it became easier for others,” he said.
Given the “incredible complexity” of the legal issues involved, Hasen said, the U.S. Supreme Court is best equipped to resolve the issues. If the court chooses not to disqualify Trump, his decision would not be binding on Congress, but it would make it “politically very difficult for Congress to say anything different,” he said.
In California, Democrats have overwhelming control of the government, so the state might have seemed a likely venue for an election challenge similar to the one that succeeded in Colorado.
But legal experts said California, unlike many other states, does not explicitly give its secretary of state the authority to disqualify presidential candidates.
However, Democratic Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis asked Weber last week to “explore all legal options” to remove Trump from the ballot using the same constitutional justification cited by the Colorado Supreme Court.
In answer, Weber suggested last week that he planned to leave the issue to state and federal courts, which have already dismissed at least two lawsuits in the state challenging Trump’s qualifications. Weber wrote that she was obligated to address voting eligibility issues “within legal parameters” and “in a way that transcends political divisions.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom of California indicated last week that he did not believe officials in his state should remove Trump from the ballot. “There is no doubt that Donald Trump is a threat to our freedoms and even our democracy, but in California we defeat candidates we don’t like at the polls,” he said in a statement. “Everything else is a political distraction.”
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs contributed reports.
