{"id":273,"date":"2023-12-29T03:49:28","date_gmt":"2023-12-29T03:49:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2023\/12\/29\/trump-disqualified-from-maine-2024-republican-primary-ballot\/"},"modified":"2023-12-29T03:49:28","modified_gmt":"2023-12-29T03:49:28","slug":"trump-disqualified-from-maine-2024-republican-primary-ballot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2023\/12\/29\/trump-disqualified-from-maine-2024-republican-primary-ballot\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump disqualified from Maine 2024 Republican primary ballot"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Maine&#8217;s Democratic secretary of state on Thursday disqualified former <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/category\/person\/donald-trump\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">President Trump<\/a> from the state&#8217;s presidential primary ballot.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In her ruling, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows cited Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which bans from office those who &#8220;engaged in insurrection.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Bellows made the ruling after some state residents, including a bipartisan group of former lawmakers, challenged Trump&#8217;s position on the ballot.<\/p>\n<p>Trump&#8217;s lawyers requested Bellows disqualify herself over tweets that they believed showed bias. In the tweets, Bellows, a lawyer and former executive director of the ACLU, called the U.S. Capitol attack an &#8220;insurrection&#8221; and bemoaned that Trump wasn&#8217;t convicted by the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/category\/politics\/senate\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">U.S. Senate<\/a> after being impeached by the U.S. House.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/opinion\/will-elections-finally-secure-honest-2024\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>WILL ELECTIONS FINALLY BE SECURE AND HONEST IN 2024?<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Trump Campaign spokesman Steven Cheung derided Bellows as &#8220;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.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are witnessing, in real-time, the attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter,&#8221; Cheung said. &#8220;Democrats in blue states are recklessly and un-Constitutionally suspending the civil rights of the American voters by attempting to summarily remove President Trump\u2019s name from the ballot.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/politics\/fbi-denver-police-investigating-threats-colorado-judges-barred-trump-states-ballots\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>FBI, DENVER POLICE INVESTIGATING THREATS AGAINST COLORADO JUDGES WHO BARRED TRUMP FOR STATE&#8217;S BALLOTS<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The Maine Republican Party likened the ruling to an attack on democracy.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, once named the most progressive Senate candidate in America, unilaterally threw Donald Trump off the ballot,&#8221; Maine GOP said in a statement.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The Maine Republican Party has been fighting these backroom elites since they started their push to subvert democracy by tossing President Trump. Rest assured we&#8217;ll be fighting this in court &#8212; all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary. And we reserve our right as a private organization to use a caucus system if that&#8217;s what it takes to keep a Democrat Hack Secretary of State from infringing on the Rights of Maine voters.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Democratic Rep. Jared Golden of Maine, who voted to impeach Trump and does &#8220;not believe he should be re-elected as President of the United States, criticized the ruling.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;[W]e are a nation of laws, therefore until he is actually found guilty of the crime of insurrection, he should be allowed on the ballot,&#8221; Golden tweeted.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said Maine voters &#8220;should decide who wins the election \u2013 not a Secretary of State chosen by the Legislature.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The Secretary of State&#8217;s decision would deny thousands of Mainers the opportunity to vote for the candidate of their choice, and it should be overturned,&#8221; she tweeted.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Maine law mandated that Bellows hold a public hearing over the issue, which she did in December. Bellows allowed each side to submit additional arguments after the Colorado Supreme Court&#8217;s historic Dec. 19 decision that Section 3 of the 14th amendment barred Trump from the ballot.<\/p>\n<p>Bellows suspended her ruling until Maine&#8217;s state Superior Court rules on the matter.<\/p>\n<p>A ruling from the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/category\/politics\/state-and-local\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Colorado Supreme Court<\/a> earlier this month 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.<\/p>\n<p>But even though Maine has just four electoral votes, it&#8217;s one of two states to split them. Trump won one of Maine&#8217;s electors in 2020, so having him off the ballot could have significant consequences for the election \u2013 should he emerge as the Republican candidate. If he&#8217;s not on the ballot there, he would start his 2024 campaign down one Electoral College vote.<\/p>\n<p>Similar battles are playing out in other states, where activists have asked election officials to remove the former president from their states&#8217; primary ballots under Section 3 of the 14th amendment.<\/p>\n<p>The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to make a final decision on Trump\u2019s eligibility nationwide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Maine&#8217;s Democratic secretary of state on Thursday disqualified former President Trump from the state&#8217;s presidential primary ballot.\u00a0 In her ruling, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows cited Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which bans from office those who &#8220;engaged in insurrection.&#8221;\u00a0 Bellows made the ruling after some state residents, including a &#8230; <a title=\"Trump disqualified from Maine 2024 Republican primary ballot\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2023\/12\/29\/trump-disqualified-from-maine-2024-republican-primary-ballot\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Trump disqualified from Maine 2024 Republican primary ballot\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}