Off The Ballot!

Maine disqualified Trump.

After the Civil War, the U.S. ratified the 14th Amendment to guarantee rights to former slaves and more. It also included a two-sentence clause called Section 3, designed to keep former Confederates from regaining government power after the war.

The measure reads:

“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”

Former president Donald J. Trump is fuming again. The washed up politician is still leading in the Republican Party presidential nomination race. Just as Michigan ruled he was eligible to appear on the primary ballot, another state joins Colorado in disqualifying him.

Both decisions are historic. The Colorado court was the first court to apply to a presidential candidate a rarely used constitutional ban against those who “engaged in insurrection.” Maine’s secretary of state was the first top election official to unilaterally strike a presidential candidate from the ballot under that provision.

We will hold elected officials and former presidents accountable.

But both decisions are on hold while the legal process plays out.

That means that Trump remains on the ballot in Colorado and Maine and that his political fate is now in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court. The Maine ruling will likely never take effect on its own. Its central impact is increasing pressure on the nation’s highest court to say clearly: Can Trump still run for president after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol?

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows made the decision on Thursday.

On December 15, two challenges to Trump's eligibility as a candidate for the primary election via Section 3 of the 14th Amendment were presented to the Maine Secretary of State, Shenna Bellows. Another challenge, citing the 22nd Amendment restriction that "no person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice", said that Trump is ineligible because he claims to have already been elected for a second time.

On December 28, Bellows announced Trump's ineligibility in a 34-page ruling, arguing that he "used a false narrative of election fraud to inflame his supporters" and "engaged in insurrection or rebellion". However, removal from the ballot has been stayed to permit time to appeal.