December 29, 2023 12:22 PM UTC

Maine Joins Colorado Booting Trump From 2024 Ballot

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Washington Post’s Patrick Marley reports, Colorado is no longer the only state in the Union to have ruled that ex-President Donald Trump is ineligible to run for re-election under the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment barring insurrectionists from playing democracy:

Maine barred Donald Trump from the primary ballot Thursday, becoming the second state to block the former president from running again because of his actions before and during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The decision by Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D) is sure to be appealed. The Colorado Supreme Court last week found Trump could not appear on the ballot in that state under a part of the U.S. Constitution that prevents insurrectionists from holding office. The Colorado Republican Party has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case, which could resolve for all states whether Trump can run again.

Both states have temporarily put their decisions on hold so Trump can pursue appeals…

As the Colorado Sun reports, yesterday the Colorado Republican Party appealed the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling in Anderson v. Griswold to the U.S. Supreme Court. Pending that appeal, Trump’s name will most likely appear on the Colorado ballot once a deadline for the printing of ballots passes, though whether those votes would count is dependent on the Court’s decision.

While the case comes from Colorado, the Centennial State is the least of Trump’s worries. He lost in Colorado in 2016 and 2020 is likely to lose again in 2024, according to polling and Democrats’ recent dominance in the state.

The real threat is how the Colorado case affects his overall campaign.

If the U.S. Supreme Court agrees with the Colorado Supreme Court that Trump is disqualified from running for office again under the 14th Amendment, his 2024 candidacy could be in jeopardy nationwide.

The electoral impact of barring Trump from the ballot in Maine is similar to Colorado, as Maine hasn’t voted for a Republican presidential candidate since George H.W. Bush in 1988. The real question in both states is what the high court ultimately decides, and the potential disqualification of Trump from the ballot in all 50 states. That risk led to some speculation that Trump’s legal team might even forego a SCOTUS challenge to Colorado’s ruling, with the possibility of a race-ending adverse decision outweighing the benefit of appearing on Colorado’s lost-cause ballot. Apparently, they’ve decided to take the risk.

Politically, we will say that we prefer Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s strategy of letting the courts decide and then supporting the court’s decisions better than Maine’s Secretary of State issuing a unilateral ruling subject to partisan second-guessing. While SoS Shenna Bellows’ decision is presumably as logically sound as the Colorado Supreme Court’s, Bellows is taking this weighty and hotly controversial question on personally–and we’re relieved that because Colorado law sends these matters to the courts first instead of to the Secretary of State as in Maine, Griswold didn’t have to.

“The events of January 6, 2021 were unprecedented and tragic,” Bellows wrote in Thursday’s decision. “They were an attack not only upon the Capitol and government officials, but also an attack on the rule of law. The evidence here demonstrates that they occurred at the behest of, and with the knowledge and support of, the outgoing President. The U.S. Constitution does not tolerate an assault on the foundations of our government, and [Maine law] requires me to act in response.”

And with that, come what may, Colorado finally has some backup in our lonely stand for the Constitution.