Election workers in Maine were advised by a judge on Wednesday to hold off until the US Supreme Court decides if Donald Trump may be on the ballot for president in 2024.
Judge deferred to the Supreme Court’s judgement and halted the proceedings after Trump urged him to reverse a previous ruling that had removed him from the ballot in Maine. In a nutshell, Trump’s name will be on the ballot for the March 5, Super Tuesday, Maine GOP primary, thanks to Wednesday’s decision.
An same case from Colorado is scheduled to be heard orally by the Supreme Court at the beginning of next month. At this then, only Maine and Colorado have disqualified Trump due to his involvement in the violence that occurred on January 6, 2021, in the Capitol.
Challenges to ballots in Maine must go via the secretary of state before they may be taken to state court for review. Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows determined that Trump was not qualified to be elected after a handful of voters challenged his eligibility in December.
The verdict was handed down by Judge Michaela Murphy of the Kennebec County Superior Court on Wednesday. Murphy had previously been appointed to the bench by a Democratic governor in 2007, and then re-appointed in 2015 by the controversial Republican and Trump supporter at the time, Governor Paul LePage.
Attempts by Trump and his Republican friends to remove Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren from the case were failed, and the president and his associates have portrayed Warren as a leftist extremist who is unjustly damaging Trump’s campaign. In addition to being swatted last month, she has reportedly gotten death threats. The facts and the law, said to Bellows, were the only factors in her conclusion.
In Maine and Colorado, Trump’s detractors have prevailed, but in other crucial states, their challenges were rejected because to procedural issues and never got to the important issues of January 6. This encompasses instances in four states: Minnesota, NH, MI, and OR.
After the Civil War, the United States enacted the 14th Amendment, which states that public servants who swear to defend the Constitution cannot serve again if they have “engaged in insurrection.” However, the ban’s enforcement is unclear from the Constitution, and the question of whether or not it pertains to the incident on January 6 is still up for legal discussion.
According to Wednesday’s judgement, both Trump and the challengers requested that the judge postpone any final ballot decisions in Maine until a verdict from the Supreme Court. “Under these circumstances, it is appropriate,” Murphy added, adding that it was “rare” to grant such a request.
In his conclusion, Murphy stated that the matter must be remanded to the secretary of state as the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Colorado case is expected to address, narrow, or make moot many of the concerns raised in this case.
It is difficult to predict the Supreme Court’s decision, but Murphy expressed hope that it will shed light on the involvement of state decision-makers, such as secretaries of state and state judicial officers, in deciding on disqualification claims raised under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Section Three.
