On Thursday, Shenna Bellows, Maine’s Secretary of State ruled that Trump should not be eligible to hold office and is disqualified from adding his name to the state’s primary ballot, accusing him of engaging in insurrection. Michigan, when faced with a similar appeal, decided to keep the former president on their primary election ballot.
These cases will ultimately be a telltale sign of how much autonomy the states are supposed to have when it comes to “establishing the standards of national elections”, Robert Hockett, a Cornell University professor of law and public policy, told Sputnik’s Political Misfits.
“These clause three of the 14th Amendment cases are causing so much consternation and confusion is partly owed to the fact that there just isn't a lot of precedent,” Hockett explained. “There haven't been a lot of insurrectionists who have tried to run for office, and so there's not a great deal of case law, so to speak, on this.”
Section three of the 14th Amendment reads that no person shall hold a seat in office if---as a previous member of office who swore an oath to support the US Constitution---they engaged in insurrection.
Despite the amount of evidence against Trump that suggests he engaged in insurrection over the course of the January 6 attack, he has not been convicted of a crime. But one does not need to be convicted of a crime in order to be removed from the ballot under the 14th Amendment, Hockett explains.
Hockett also predicts that Maine will not be the last US state to try and knock Trump off their primary ballots.
“There's an effort underway to convince many secretaries of state to see to it that Trump isn't on the ballot. And again, it's not that surprising why. I mean, the cause of the 14th Amendment was, of course, put in there as a response to the Civil War and to see to it that future insurrectionists wouldn't be able to occupy positions in the government of the states or the cities or the union itself any longer," he explains.
"That was the whole idea. It's written pretty clearly and unambiguously, right,” Hockett said, adding that there is no “strangeness” or “mystery" in the wording of the amendment.
"The only source of mystery, I think, is the fact that it doesn't say precisely in what criteria state officials have to employ in determining whether somebody is indeed an insurrectionist, or has indeed assisted insurrectionists, or has indeed engaged in insurrection," he added.
"And again, the 14th Amendment doesn't require anything more than that. It certainly doesn't require criminal liability be found. So in that sense, this case might confront us with the necessity of finally resolving one way or the other just how much autonomy the states really are supposed to have when it comes to establishing the standards of national elections as conducted within those particular states," said Hockett.
Hockett went on to address some of the arguments that have been made to keep Trump on state ballots, one of which is the American ideal that US citizens maintain the “right” to choose their president. But the US Constitution does not allow all persons to run for president.
"Taylor Swift can't be president right now either, according to the Constitution, because she's not old enough and Raul, Fidel Castro's brother, who's still alive and well down in Cuba, also, can't run for president even if 90% of the American public sort of wants him to be the US president, he's constitutionally barred from being a candidate,” Hockett explained.
“And there's nothing different about Trump here where that's concerned. If there is a constitutional provision that simply and categorically renders him disqualified, well, that's the end of the matter. Otherwise, you don't have the Constitution, you don't have the rule of law,” the professor concluded.
20 December 2023, 18:25 GMT
Maine’s secretary of state’s decision can still be appealed to the state’s judicial supreme court. Thus far, the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling is the only state to have ruled that Trump should not appear on the primary ballot. That decision has made its way to the US Supreme Court. Were Trump to still become the Republican nominee, similar lawsuits would likely be filed during the 2024 US presidential election.
“I could certainly imagine him doing that if he were not to win the Republican nomination,” answered Hockett when asked if Trump might push himself onto the ballot as an Independent nominee.
“I don't think it would get him anywhere further, right? Because I don't think that any state that has been willing to strike him from the ballot in the Republican primary would be hesitant to strike the ballot in the subsequent actual national election. Or indeed, if anything, I would think states would be even more likely to strike it down, because then it would be a matter of who's going to be president rather than [who is] just going to be a party's nominee," Hockett concluded.
In response to Maine’s decision, Trump’s campaign called Bellows 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."
"We will quickly file a legal objection in state court to prevent this atrocious decision in Maine from taking effect," Steven Cheung, the campaign’s spokesperson, added.