Ex-president asks Mass. panel to dismiss ballot challenges
Former president Donald Trump asked a state panel Wednesday to dismiss two challenges seeking to remove him from Massachusetts’ Republican primary ballot, arguing that Congress — not the state’s Ballot Law Commission — is the “proper body to resolve questions” about a candidate’s eligibility to appear.
Attorneys for Trump filed his request a day before the Massachusetts Ballot Law Commission is slated to meet in a prehearing conference to begin considering a pair of objections to Trump’s name appearing on the state’s March 5 primary ballot.
Both challenges were filed by the group Free Speech For People and attorney Shannon LissRiordan, a former candidate for state attorney general. The petitions argue that Trump should not appear on the state’s primary or general election ballots because of his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol when he “engaged in rebellion and insurrection against the Constitution of the United States.”
The filing followed dozens of challenges in other states, including in Maine, where the secretary of state last month barred Trump from the state’s Republican primary. In Colorado, the state Supreme Court also ruled Trump was ineligible for the White House under a rarely used clause in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
Both those decisions, however, are on hold. Trump appealed the Colorado ruling to the Supreme Court, and a Maine judge on Wednesday paused acting on an appeal of the secretary’s decision there, to allow time for the Supreme Court to rule in the other case.
How those decisions could affect the state Ballot Law Commission’s deliberations was not immediately clear. But local attorneys for Trump wrote in a filing Wednesday that it would be “beyond absurd” for officials in individual states to decide whether Trump should appear on the ballot.
“If the Commission were to exclude President Trump from the ballot, it will have usurped Congress’ authority,” Marc R. Salinas, a North Andover attorney, wrote on Trump’s behalf. “The Commission lacks authority to remove President Trump from the ballot.”
His attorneys also asked for a hearing, where they could also contest the challengers’ claims that “he engaged in an insurrection.”
Judges in Minnesota and Michigan have ruled against efforts filed by Free Speech For People to remove Trump from the ballots there. The group also filed similar challenges in Oregon, where its Supreme Court last week ruled that Trump could remain, for now, on that state’s ballot, noting that the Supreme Court “may resolve one or more contentions” that the challengers had made there.
Thursday’s conference is not expected to feature oral arguments, according to a spokesperson for Secretary of State William F. Galvin, who serves as a clerk for the commission. But the commission could schedule a hearing or dismiss the objections if it determines the objections against Trump are not within its jurisdiction.
Free Speech For People and Liss-Riordan filed their own request with the commission, asking it to issue a ruling on their challenge because the legal issues involved had already been “fully and fairly litigated by . . . in Colorado and Maine.”
“In short, the factual and constitutional issues of this objection have already been decided: Trump engaged in insurrection and is unable to assume the presidency,” they wrote, arguing that the commission has a “mandate to order that an ineligible candidate be removed from the primary ballot.”