As anti-Trump Leftists celebrate Maine’s decision to kick former President Trump off of the state’s 2024 ballot, some Democrats say it violates constitutional rights.
Just hours after Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows announced her plans to ban Trump from the ballot, Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) said that until the 45th president is proven guilty of the crime of insurrection, he should be allowed on the ballot.
My statement on the Maine Secretary of State's ruling: pic.twitter.com/ByO3XJe1JS
— Congressman Jared Golden (@RepGolden) December 29, 2023
Several other Democrats also agreed, arguing that it is undemocratic to remove Trump from the presidential ballot for a crime he has not committed.
Marianne Williamson, a long-shot candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, said that secretaries of state should not be allowed to decide Trump’s eligibility. She believes “it’s equally undemocratic that (Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn.) and myself are kept off ballots due to Secretaries of State doing the bidding of the DNC.”
Meanwhile, some Democrats, such as Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), told the New York Times that the text of the 14th Amendment is clear-- which states that the “insurrection clause” bars officials who have engaged in “insurrection or rebellion” from holding office.
However, not one of the 90-plus criminal charges targeted against Trump across four separate indictments accuses him of engaging in an “insurrection.”
Still, despite this, in her 34-page decision, Bellows argues that she chose to bar Trump from the state’s ballot solely based on his involvement in the January 6 Capitol Hill protests.
On the contrary, even Trump’s 2024 GOP rivals have come out in defense of the politically motivated target against the former president.
A spokesperson for Republican candidate Nikki Haley’s campaign told The New York Times that the former ambassador to the United Nations “will beat Trump fair and square” but that “it should be up to voters to decide who gets elected.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) also criticized the move, saying Bellow’s decision “opens up Pandora’s box” of what can and cannot disqualify a presidential candidate from the ballot in the future.
He said the notion that “one bureaucrat in an executive position can simply unilaterally disqualify someone from office turns on its head every notion of constitutional due process that this country has always abided by for over 200 years.”