Maine’s secretary of state must decide whether Trump can remain on the ballot
Maine’s secretary of state is poised to issue a decision next week that could strengthen a citizen-led movement to keep former President Donald J. Trump out of primary elections across the country — or counter a groundbreaking court ruling in Colorado this week.
At a hearing last week at Maine’s State House in Augusta, Shenna Bellows, the secretary of state, weighed three separate complaints challenging Trump’s eligibility to appear on the state’s Republican primary ballot. Two of them are based on the same section of the Constitution that the Colorado Supreme Court cited Tuesday in its 4-to-3 decision finding that Mr. Trump cannot hold office again because of his actions leading up to the attack on January 6, 2021 .the Capitol amounted to an insurrection.
More than 30 states have filed some form of challenge to Trump’s eligibility, but many have already been rejected. Most take place in the courts, but in Maine — due to a quirk in the Constitution — the secretary of state weighs in first, with voters filing petitions, not lawsuits. Her decision can then be appealed to the state Supreme Court.
The ruling in Colorado was the first in history to bar a presidential candidate from voting under the 14th Amendment, which was created after the Civil War. One section of the amendment prohibits those who have taken an oath “to support the Constitution” from holding office if they have “been guilty of an insurrection or rebellion against the same,” or have given “aid or comfort to the enemies thereof ‘.
Mr Trump’s campaign has said it will appeal the decision to the US Supreme Court; Should the Supreme Court take up the case, other challenges across the country will likely be stayed.
After the ruling in Colorado, Ms. Bellows, an elected Democrat, invited lawyers from both parties to Maine to submit additional memoranda and said her decision would likely come next week.
The Republican primaries in Maine and Colorado are both scheduled for March 5, known as Super Tuesday because so many states are holding primaries that day. But states must start sending ballots to military and overseas voters 45 days before a federal election — Jan. 20, in the case of the March 5 primary, adding urgency to the situation.
If the Supreme Court agrees to hear Mr. Trump’s appeal, the Colorado court’s decision would not take effect on Jan. 4 as scheduled, and Mr. Trump would remain eligible to appear on the ballot there pending the outcome of the appeal, Colorado said. state officials.
An appeal would also likely interrupt other efforts to keep him from voting across the country. But it was unclear this week what it would mean in Maine, where the trial so far is taking place outside the courts.
Under Maine law, registered voters can challenge access to a candidate’s ballot by petitioning the Secretary of State. The state faced three such challenges to Trump’s voting eligibility: one from a group of former elected officials, and two from individual residents.
Mark Brewer, the chairman of the University of Maine’s political science department, said little attention had been paid to the complaints in Maine until the Colorado ruling.
“Now everyone is looking at where else this could happen,” he said.
The Michigan challenge is also being closely watched. Lawyers on both sides have asked the state Supreme Court to rule next week, but the court could schedule oral arguments first or wait to see if the U.S. Supreme Court rules in the Colorado case.
Similar lawsuits filed by a longtime Republican presidential candidate, John Anthony Castro, have been dismissed by federal judges in Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Florida, and withdrawn in a dozen other states.
Sworn in nearly three years ago as Maine’s first female secretary of state, Ms. Bellows grew up in tiny Hancock, Maine, and served two terms as a senator. She is the former executive director of the nonprofit Holocaust and Human Rights Center of Maine and the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine.
Dr. Brewer said he couldn’t predict her decision, but noted that in her shoes he would find it difficult to rule as the Colorado court did.
“Whatever you think he did, the former president has not been charged with insurrection,” said Dr. Brewer in an interview. “Even if he had been charged, he hasn’t had his day in court yet, so in the eyes of the law he’s not guilty of anything.”
But Ethan Strimling, a former Portland mayor and Democratic state lawmaker who led one of the challenges with two former Republican lawmakers, said the Colorado court’s decision changes that equation.
“There is no longer any truth to that argument because two courts have now found that he incited insurrection,” Mr. Strimling said, referring to the Colorado Supreme Court ruling and a lower court ruling that preceded it. “I think that provides a lot of clarity.”
Lawyers for Mr. Trump argued in their follow-up letter that the Colorado decision should not be relevant to the Maine proceeding because the two challenges are separate actions under different laws and standards, and because the former president was not given a “full and fair opportunity.” had. to litigate the facts in Colorado.
In addition, they reiterated that the Secretary of State has no legal authority to exclude Mr. Trump from voting in Maine.
“The Constitution reserves the exclusive power of the Electoral College and Congress to determine whether someone may become president,” they argued in a final letter last week. “The challengers are essentially asking the secretary to strip those institutions of the power to solve Section Three problems.”
While two of the three challenges in Maine focus on the 14th Amendment, the third, filed by Paul Gordon, a Portland attorney, argues that Mr. Trump should be ineligible to vote under the 22nd Amendment, which says that “ no one should be elected president more than twice.” The basis for his argument is that Mr. Trump has repeatedly claimed to have won the 2020 election.
Mr. Trump could “remove this obstacle” to qualifying for the ballot, Mr. Gordon said in his complaint, by “acknowledging that he lost the 2020 election and by rejecting all prior statements that undermine the integrity of that undermine elections.”
Nick Corasaniti, Ernesto Londoño And Mitch Smith reporting contributed.