BREAKING: Maine Kicks Trump Off Of Ballot

Maine’s Secretary of State has removed former President Donald Trump from the Republican primary ballot claiming he committed insurrection. The decision came as Colorado put Trump back on the ballot pending a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.

From the AP:

Maine’s Democratic secretary of state on Thursday removed former President Donald Trump from the state’s presidential primary ballot under the Constitution’s insurrection clause, becoming the first election official to take action unilaterally in a decision that has potential Electoral College consequences.

While Maine has just four electoral votes, it’s one of two states to split them. Trump won one of Maine’s electors in 2020, so having him off the ballot there should he emerge as the Republican general election candidate could have outsized implications in a race that is expected to be narrowly decided.

The decision by Secretary of State Shenna Bellows follows a December ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court that booted Trump from the ballot there under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Colorado is a Democratic-leaning state that is not expected to be competitive for Republicans in November.

Bellows found that Trump could no longer run for his prior job because his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol violated Section 3, which bans from office those who “engaged in insurrection.” Bellows made the ruling after some state residents, including a bipartisan group of former lawmakers, challenged Trump’s position on the ballot.

Her decision came one day after Trump’s lawyers asked her to disqualify herself over tweets that they said showed bias. She called the U.S. Capitol attack an “insurrection” and bemoaned that Trump wasn’t convicted by the U.S. Senate after being impeached by the U.S. House.

Trump can appeal this decision through Maine’s courts and he is expected to. Depending on the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on the Colorado case, he may not need to.

Trump won one of Maine’s four electoral votes so unlike Colorado’s decision, this could be relevant to the general election. It could also embolden Democrat officials in purple states to issue similiar rulings.

“The Maine Secretary of State is a former ACLU attorney, a virulent leftist and a hyper-partisan Biden-supporting Democrat who has decided to interfere in the presidential election on behalf of Crooked Joe Biden. We are witnessing, in real-time, the attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter. 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. Make no mistake, these partisan election interference efforts are a hostile assault on American democracy. Biden and the Democrats simply do not trust the American voter in a free and fair election and are now relying on the force of government institutions to protect their grip on power.” the Trump campaign said in a release.

Either way, this is far from the last word on this topic.