The state of Maine's top election official has pulled former President Donald Trump from the state's 2024 primary ballot, citing the 14th Amendment's "insurrectionist ban."
Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows postponed her judgment pending a possible state court appeal, which Trump's campaign has stated they expect to pursue.
The judgment makes Maine the second state to disqualify Trump from office, following the Colorado Supreme Court's shocking finding earlier this month that took him from the ballot. The development is a huge success for Trump's detractors, who claim they are attempting to enforce a constitutional provision designed to defend the country from anti-democratic insurgents by invoking the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.
After presiding over an administrative hearing earlier this month concerning Trump's eligibility for office, Bellows, a Democrat, ruled on Thursday. A bipartisan group of former state legislators filed the challenge.
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“I do not reach this conclusion lightly,” Bellows wrote. “Democracy is sacred … I am mindful that no Secretary of State has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access based on Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment. I am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection.”
The 14th Amendment, ratified after the Civil War, states that American officials who "engage in" insurgency are ineligible for future office. However, the provision is ambiguous and does not specify how the restriction should be enforced.
Most legal experts believe the US Supreme Court will resolve the problem once and for all.
Nonetheless, the Maine judgment builds on the momentum that Trump's detractors asserted following the Colorado ruling. Several other states, including Michigan and Minnesota, had previously rejected similar measures.
In a statement released Thursday, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung called Bellows a "virulent leftist" who has "decided to interfere in the presidential election."
"Democrats in blue states are recklessly and un-Constitutionally suspending the civil rights of the American voters by attempting to summarily remove President Trump's name from the ballot," Cheung said in a statement.
Bellows concluded that she had a legal obligation to follow the 14th Amendment's insurrectionist restriction and remove Trump from the primary ballot.
Bellows stated in her explanation that the challengers supplied overwhelming evidence that the January 6 insurgency "occurred at the behest of" Trump - and that the US Constitution "does not tolerate an assault on the foundations of our government."
