(WatchDogReport.org) – Maine’s Democratic Secretary of State Shenna Bellows disqualified former President and presidential candidate Donald Trump from the state’s primary ballot on December 28. In her ruling, she cited the 14th Amendment’s Section 3, which prohibits any individual who “engaged in insurrection” from running for office. Bellows made the ruling a couple of days after some Maine residents and former lawmakers challenged the conservative leader’s inclusion on the ballot.
Trump’s legal team requested that Maine’s secretary of state disqualify herself because of a series of tweets they believed showed her bias against the former president. In the tweets, Bellows said that the Capitol riots represented an “insurrection” and lamented that the Republican presidential candidate wasn’t impeached by the US Senate.
Trump Campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said that Bellow was a “virulent leftist” and a “Biden-supporting” liberal who decided to interfere in the 2024 presidential election on behalf of Democratic US President Joe Biden. He added that the United States is currently witnessing the “attempted theft” of an electoral event and the entire “disenfranchisement” of US voters.
On December 19, a ruling from Colorado’s Supreme Court booted the former commander-in-chief from the ballot in that state. Some political analysts claimed that the move wasn’t going to make a substantial difference in the presidential election as Colorado is a blue state that isn’t expected to be competitive for the Republican nominee.
While Maine has only four electoral votes, it’s one of the two US states that divides them. Trump won one of the state’s electors back in 2020, meaning that having him out of the ballot could have major consequences for the presidential election if he wins the nomination, as he would start the campaign down one Electoral College vote.
Similar legal battles are taking place in many other states where activists have formally asked election officials to remove Trump from their states’ primary ballots. Legal analysts have said that the United States Supreme Court will make a final decision on the matter, which could increase political tensions nationwide.
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