Half a month before the Republicans kick off their primaries, Maine has decided that Donald Trump must be banned from the ballot in that northeastern state due to his role in the Capitol storming of January 6, 2021. The highest court in the state of Colorado decided two weeks ago to the same reason that the American ex-president is not allowed to participate in the election race.
Trump’s third bid for the White House faces these obstacles as his opponents in dozens of states attempt to invoke the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Section 3 of this determines that anyone who took the constitutional oath and was subsequently guilty of organizing or aiding an insurrection or rebellion should not run for public office. With his inciting role on and around ‘January 6’, the then president would have ‘disqualified’ himself on this ground.
The amendment in question was introduced after the American Civil War to keep leaders of the losing southern camp out of politics, but has hardly been tested since. Lawyers speak of ‘uncharted territory’.
The attempts to use the obscure provision of law against Trump are now being described by the ex-president and his supporters as ‘election interference’. President Joe Biden’s Democrats would only hope to defeat Trump by ‘cancelling’ him, the accusation goes. As with the 92 crimes charged against him this year, Trump is also trying to turn these obstacles to his electoral advantage – with success, according to polls.
States judge differently
The politically charged task of processing the requests now lies first with the individual states: in the US, they are organizing the primaries this winter and spring as well as the general race in the autumn. This already makes the American ballot box a patchwork of procedures – and all requests to ban Trump from the ballot are treated equally differently.
In Colorado it was the highest courts of that state who provisionally excluded Trump in mid-December. A decision that the Republican Party appealed this week. The magistrates, all nominated by Democratic governors, have received death threats since their interim verdict.
In Maine it is not the judge who must assess objections to a nomination, but the secretary of state – the top official in each state who organizes the elections. In Maine her name is Shenna Bellows, a Democratic politician who was elected to this position by the predominantly Democratic state parliament and was therefore immediately accused of political bias on Thursday. Trump’s exclusion only concerns the primaries (in Maine on March 5) and has been suspended pending an appeal against it.
In California Bellows’ colleague Shirley Weber came to the opposite decision on Thursday. She rejected a request from the (Democratic) deputy governor to remove Trump from the ballot dismissive received. “Such a decision cannot be made lightly,” Weber stated, “and must be firmly grounded in the laws and procedures of California and our Constitution.”
Also in Michigan a request to ban Trump from the Republican primary failed. Wednesday confirmed the Supreme Court of the northern state – with four Democratic and three Republican judges – ruled by a lower court that the secretary of state does not have the authority to remove a candidate from a primary election ballot.
In Minnesota the highest judges rejected a request last month. She judged that it does not prevent ’14th’ political parties from putting an insurgent on the ballot in a primary race. However, the court in Minnesota did not agree to Trump’s lawyers’ demand that their client should also be allowed to appear on the ballot in the general elections.
Never convicted
If the states already have the authority to consider this issue, then the fact that he was never convicted of the Capitol riots argues against Trump’s exclusion. Not in the impeachment proceedings that Congress initiated against him in early 2021 after his departure from the White House, and not yet in the four criminal cases in which he has been charged this year, two of which (partly) revolve around his opposition to the outcome of 2020.
A special House investigative committee concluded at the end of 2022 that he conspired against the US in the prelude to the storming and “ignited the fire.” As Shenna Bellows also wrote in her 32-page judgment on Thursday, “Trump was aware of the tinder he was spreading with his months of attempts to cast doubt on a democratic election, and then chose to strike a match.”
Supreme Court’s move
All the varying decisions and verdicts make it highly likely that the federal Supreme Court in Washington will have the final say. Six of the nine high judges are considered conservative and three of them were nominated by Trump. Now that an appeal has been filed in Colorado, they could take up the issue, the question is how much haste they want to move. Last week, the Court rejected a request from special counsel Jack Smith for an accelerated ruling on an immunity claim by the ex-president.
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The fate of presidential candidate Trump now lies in the hands of ‘his’ Supreme Court
Trump’s legal strategy remains to delay all lawsuits against him as much as possible while building up as much political immunity as possible. So at least until he wins the nomination sometime this spring, but preferably until after Election Day — when a possible new presidency could offer him the ultimate protection.
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2023-12-29 15:30:41
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