The determination by Maine’s secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, that President Trump is constitutionally disqualified from appearing on her state’s presidential ballot — arrived at via an administrative hearing, not a trial — is likely to be seized on by those who contend that this effort to prevent America’s 45th president from becoming its 47th one is undemocratic.The disqualification is rooted in Section Three of the 14th Amendment, which bars those who swore an oath to the Constitution from holding office again if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion.” Maine follows, but without due process, on the heels of Colorado’s Supreme Court, which last week disqualified Mr. Trump from the ballot. He has survived disqualification efforts in Minnesota, Michigan, and California.The issue is ticketed for the Supreme Court. Colorado has requested that the Nine render a ruling by January 5, when its primary ballots need to be printed. Until the justices intervene, though, Mr. Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, appears set to appear on some ballots and not on others. Ms. Bellow’s decision can be challenged in state court, and she suspended her ruling pending any court action.Ms. Bellows finds that Mr. Trump is “not qualified to hold the office of the President under Section Three of the 14th Amendment.” Unlike in Colorado, where a district court judge found that Section Three did not apply to the office of the president, only to be reversed by that state’s high court, Ms. Bellows reached her decision via an administrative hearing. The decision was hers alone.That role was thrust upon her by Maine’s election law, where the secretary of state is responsible for preparing ballots for the presidential primary. She represents that she takes her “role in this proceeding extremely seriously, given both the stakes and the novel constitutional questions at issue.” Mr. Trump has alleged that Ms. Bellows, a Democrat, is acting out of bias. She asserts that her “decision is based exclusively” on the record.Ms. Bellows’s hearing was not without incident. A “technical difficulty” — in the form of an “inoperative Dropbox link” — meant that Mr. Trump was unable to view a portion of the evidence before his disqualification hearing. The 45th president alleged that was a due process violation. Ms. Bellows disagreed, noting that “there is no requirement” under the Administrative Procedures Act, which governs these hearings, that “evidence be shared prior to an administrative hearing.”The APA, signed into law by President Truman, is seen by many as an unconstitutional departure from the rights of a trial by jury vouchsafed in the Sixth Amendment and the protections of due process cited by Mr. Trump, which are inscribed in the same 14th Amendment that contains the Disqualification Clause. The APA created a byzantine and parallel system of adjudication that lacks the safeguards afforded defendants in traditional courts of law. In the kinds of hearing provided for by the APA, Ms. Bellows explains, “the fact that a report includes hearsay, contains irrelevant facts, or lacks foundation does not automatically render it inadmissible.” She is referring to the January 6 congressional committee report, whose admission into evidence Mr. Trump contested. The “central question,” Ms. Bellows adds, is whether the report is “the type of evidence on which reasonable people are accustomed to rely in serious affairs.” Mr. Trump did not meet the burden of “showing the report is untrustworthy.” Ultimately, the secretary of state’s authority over elections comes from the “Time, Places, Manner” clause of the Constitution.Ms. Bellows declares that she is “not bound by either the federal or Maine rules of evidence.” She does allow, though, that the report “reflects a curated view of the evidence and contains characterization of that evidence,” and that its “limitations” mean that she assigned it less weight. These pages have argued that it also flirts with the Constitution’s prohibition of attainder. Mr. Trump’s fate in Maine hinges, thus far, on a single word. The state’s consent form to run for office asks candidates to confirm that they “meet the qualifications to hold this office as listed above.” The word “as,” Ms. Bellows, comprises all qualifications for office.There is “nothing unfair,” she insists, in holding a candidate for the highest office to all those requirements.Ms. Bellows did turn away a more exotic challenge to Mr. Trump’s candidacy, one rooted in the 22nd Amendment, which limits presidents to two terms in office. A Mainer contended that because Mr. Trump asserts that he won the 2020 election — in addition to the one in 2016 — he is barred from running again, in 2024. The secretary of state was not persuaded that Mr. Trump has been in any sense president over the last three years.Ms. Bellows does concur with the Colorado Supreme Court, though, that what happened on January 6 was an insurrection with which Mr. Trump engaged. She reckons that the Constitution “does not tolerate an assault on the foundation of our government.” First above all, she asserts, is the oath she — and Mr. Trump— “swore to uphold the Constitution.”That, however, is not the oath Mr. Trump and other presidents take. The oath they take is to “preserve, protect, and defend” the Constitution. Mr. Trump, moreover, was tried in an impeachment proceeding for inciting an insurrection and was discovered by the Senate to be not guilty and acquitted.
