A bid to remove former President Donald Trump from the primary election ballot in Massachusetts has failed at the state’s ballot law commission, which said they lack jurisdiction to address the matter.
The decision was handed down Monday after the bipartisan State Ballot Law Commission held a hearing last week to discuss whether they have the power to take a candidate off the ballot. The commission consists of three governor-appointed members: a Republican chairman and two other Democrat appointees.
An attorney for the group of voters who filed the complaint argued that the commission does have such power. However, a lawyer for the former president said they do not, or at least not for the primary election, where political parties get to put who they want on the primary ballot.
The complaint was filed on the basis of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which bans anyone from holding federal office if they have taken an oath to defend the Constitution but then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion.”
President Trump, the challengers argued, was responsible for the breach of the U.S. Capitol that took place after his “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, which they characterized as an “insurrection,” and should therefore be banned from running for another term.
“We believe that Mr. Trump’s candidacy for this office and placement on the Massachusetts ballot violates the Constitution, so we are challenging the constitutionality,” said Shannon Liss-Riordan, an attorney for the challengers. “It is the job of this commission to hear objections to the legality of placement of candidates on the ballot.”
Trump attorney Marc Salinas urged the commission to dismiss the challenge, saying that it’s up to Massachusetts Republican Party to decide which Republican appears on the primary ballot.
“Our position is when the state committee places you on the ballot, the Secretary of State is required to put you on the ballot, regardless of qualification,” Mr. Salinas said during the hearing.
Monday’s decision kept President Trump on the Bay State’s primary ballot for now, but avoided addressing the 14th Amendment question. Instead, it simply stated that the ballot law commission “does not have jurisdiction over the matters presented.”
Amy Carnevale, chairwoman of Massachusetts Republican State Committee, welcomed the decision.
“I applaud this decision to allow actual voters to choose their nominee,” she wrote on X. “The ill-conceived effort by career plaintiff lawyers would have undercut our system of democracy. The decision of who MA should choose as the nominee will now rely squarely with voters.”
The challengers have vowed to appeal the decision in Massachusetts courts.
“We are preparing our appeal to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court,” a written statement from Ms. Liss-Riordan read. “Today’s decision from the state ballot commission was not a ruling on the merits. We believe the commission erred in its interpretation of Massachusetts election laws when it held it did not have jurisdiction to rule on this dispute.”
Massachusetts’ presidential primary is scheduled for March 5.
Similar challenges against President Trump have been filed in more than two dozen other states, with Colorado becoming the first state ever to declare a presidential candidate ineligible under the “insurrection ban” laid out in the 14th Amendment.
In Maine, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows has also removed the Republican frontrunner from the presidential primary ballot, citing the role he played in the events of Jan. 6, 2021. Her decision on President Trump’s ballot status has so far been placed on hold by a state judge in order to allow time for the nation’s highest court to rule on the case in Colorado.
The U.S. Supreme Court has never ruled on a case invoking Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. The “insurrection clause” itself was created after the Civil War by the Reconstruction Republicans, originally intended to keep former lawmakers, judges, and executive-branch officials of the defeated Confederacy from running for office.
