Maine removes Donald Trump from primary ballot, the 2nd state to bar former president
Trump campaign says it will quickly file objection to 'atrocious' decision
Maine's top election official on Thursday disqualified Donald Trump from the state ballot in next year's U.S. presidential primary election, becoming the second state after Colorado to bar the former president for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, concluded that Trump, the front-runner for the Republican nomination in 2024, incited an insurrection when he spread false claims about voter fraud in the 2020 election and then urged his supporters to march on the Capitol to stop lawmakers from certifying the vote.
"The weight of the evidence makes clear that Mr. Trump was aware of the tinder laid by his multi-month effort to delegitimize a democratic election, and then chose to light a match," Bellows wrote in her decision.
The decision can be appealed to a state Superior Court, and Bellows suspended her ruling until the court rules on the matter.
Trump campaign calls decision 'atrocious'
Trump's campaign said it would quickly file an objection to the "atrocious" decision.
Lawyers for Trump have disputed that he engaged in insurrection and argued that his remarks to supporters on the day of the 2021 riot were protected by his right to free speech.
The decision came after a group of former Maine lawmakers said that Trump should be disqualified based on a provision of the U.S. Constitution that bars people from holding office if they engaged in "insurrection or rebellion" after previously swearing an oath to the United States.
The former lawmakers — Kimberley Rosen, Thomas Saviello and Ethan Strimling — said in a statement that Bellows "stood on the side of democracy and our constitution in her decision to bar former president Donald Trump from Maine's ballot."
Rosen and Saviello are both former Republican state senators. Strimling is a former Democratic state senator.
Chris Galdieri, a politics professor at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire, told CBC News in an interview that the United States finds itself in "a very strange and very dangerous position" following the ruling.
"I think one of the things that this decision and other decisions like it bring forward is just how strange it is that someone like Trump — who lost a presidential election, who tried to overturn the results by force — is still considered not just a force within the Republican Party but is the front-runner for its nomination for president," he said.
The ruling applies only to Maine's March primary election, but it could affect Trump's status for the November general election.
It likely will add to pressure on the U.S. Supreme Court to resolve questions about Trump's eligibility nationwide under the constitutional provision known as Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
Advocacy groups and some anti-Trump voters have challenged his candidacy in several states under the provision, which was passed after the U.S. Civil War to keep former confederates from serving in government.
The Supreme Court's 6-3 conservative majority includes three justices nominated by Trump.
Similar attempts to disqualify Trump rejected
Trump has been indicted in both a federal case and in Georgia for his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election, but he has not been charged with insurrection related to the Jan. 6 attack.
He leads opinion polls by a large margin in the race for the Republican nomination in 2024.
Colorado's top court disqualified Trump from the state primary ballot on Dec. 19, making him the first candidate in U.S. history to be deemed ineligible for the presidency for engaging in insurrection.
Trump has vowed to appeal the Colorado ruling to the Supreme Court and criticized ballot challenges as "undemocratic." The Colorado Republican Party filed its own Supreme Court appeal on Wednesday.
Similar attempts to disqualify Trump in other states have been rejected.
The top court in Michigan, a pivotal battleground state in the general election, declined on Wednesday to hear an appeal on Trump's eligibility to hold office.
Maine is rated as likely Democratic by non-partisan election forecasters, meaning U.S. President Joe Biden is expected to win the state. But Trump captured one electoral vote from Maine in both the 2016 and 2020 elections due to an unusual setup that allows the state to split its four electoral college votes.
Candidates must win 270 electoral college votes to win the presidency.
Unlike in other states, Bellows, who oversees elections in Maine, was required to make an initial determination about disqualification before it was considered by the courts.
With files from CBC News