Our recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good. Trump and his minions falsely claimed that he won the election, and have kept repeating the Big Lie. And we now know how close he came to subverting the Constitution.
Maine’s top election official ejected former President Donald Trump from the state’s ballot on Thursday, declaring him ineligible to serve as president because of his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress.
The ruling by Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, is certain to inflame a roaring national debate over whether the Republican presidential frontrunner should be allowed to hold power again.
The decision makes Maine the second state in two weeks to disqualify Trump’s candidacy due to the constitutional bar on officeholders who supported or “engaged in insurrection or rebellion.” Last week the Colorado Supreme Court barred Trump from the state’s Republican primary ballot under a similar interpretation of the 14th Amendment.
Bellows’ decision on Thursday increases the pressure on the U.S. Supreme Court to step in and ultimately decide Trump’s fate — as the Colorado GOP petitioned the justices this week to do.
Unlike the Colorado ruling, this one comes from an individual officeholder affiliated with the Democratic Party. And Maine, unlike Colorado, has been a presidential battleground in recent years; under an unusual state law, it cast one of its Electoral College votes for Trump in both 2016 and 2020.
Trump was quick to attack the decision, with an aide calling it “partisan election interference.” But his removal from the ballot in two states remains a stark illustration of his deep legal and political vulnerabilities.
Bellows, who made the call in Maine because state law requires the secretary to adjudicate ballot challenges to candidates’ eligibility, defended her decision in her determination.
“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,” Bellows wrote. “I am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection.”
