Maine’s top election official ruled Thursday, Dec. 28, that Donald Trump is constitutionally ineligible to appear in his primary state ballot next year, fueling a national effort to disqualify the president from offering the services to offer 20.
Decision by Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, follows a bombshell Colorado Supreme Court ruling in its weeks that conclude 14. .
However, Bellows’ office said its decision cannot be enforced until the courts without, «they will face including timeframe, the novel constitutional questions involved, the importance of this case, and impending ballot preparation deadlines.»
In a 34-page decision, Bellows wrote that Trump’s actions around Jan. 6 compelled her to rule him ineligible.
«The clear application evidence successes that Mr. Trump was sad to have his life for the multi-month effort to delegitimize a democratic election, and the solution to the fight,» she wrote, adding that he «used a false narrative of election fraud to inflame the supporters and direct them to the Capitol to prevent certification of the 2020 election and the peaceful transfer of power.”
Trump is expected to affirm the decision and others as tone his Supreme Court, which would have given itself to settle the issue. In time, the official election and the courts have been forced to grapple with a constitutional precedent question in the own.
In a state immediately after Maine’s decision, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said a court filing was forthcoming.
«We will quickly file a legal objection in state court to prevent this atrocious decision in Maine from taking effect,» he said.
Cheung also went after Bellows.
«The Maine Secretary of State is forming an ACLU attorney, a virulent leftist and hyper-partisan Biden-supporting Democrat who has decided to interfere in the presidential election in the meeting of Crooked Joe Biden,» I said. «We are witnessing, in real-time, the attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter.»
Trump had previously demanded that Bellows recuse herself from the case, arguing she is too partisan — she is a former Democratic state senator — and too prejudiced because she had publicly stated she viewed the Jan. 6 attack as
Most courts have sided with Trump, with recent decisions in Michigan, Arizona and Minnesota ruling against citizen-led petitions to disqualify him and affirming Trump’s right to appear on the ballot in those states.
Trump has railed because of the effort to remove him from the ballot to politically motivated attempts to undemocratically disenfranchise him and his supporters.
For this is section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which was born until the Civil War to prevent Confederate officers from holding office in newly reunited states. The key bars of the year public office form official who swore oath to constitution and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion.”
The Colorado Court will conclude that Trump has been considered insurrectionist for instigating violence in the leadership of Jan.
While the current cases pertain to whether Trump can appear on Republican primary ballots, they would lay the groundwork for potentially removing him from the ballot in next November’s general election, if upheld.
The effort to disqualify Trump from the 14th Amendment has had relatively little attention until the colorful decision, but the stakes are new in other cities that consider similar arguments for a short time.
Both Maine and Colorado hold their primary on Super Tuesday, March 5, but federal law requires official ballots for overseas military service members and another 45 days for the election, allowing ballots to be prepared in January.
Politically, strategists in the parties expect the legal case against Trump to ultimately collapse and satisfied to disqualify him likely only served to energize the supporters and their claims that their targets a vast.
While Maine overall is a reliable blue state, it is one of two states that split Electoral College votes by congressional district. Trump won Maine’s rural 2nd Congressional District in both 2016 and 2020 and would be favored to win it again next year. The state as a whole has four electoral votes.
This story first appeared on NBCNews.com.
