Trump will remain on Mass. ballot — for now
State panel says it lacks authority in case
Citing a lack of jurisdiction, the Massachusetts Ballot Law Commission on Monday rejected calls to remove former president Donald Trump’s name from the state’s Republican presidential primary ballot.
For now, the decision appears to clear the way for Trump to appear in the Massachusetts primary, which is slated for March 5. But one of the advocates behind the legal challenge said Monday evening that they plan to appeal the matter to the state Supreme Judicial Court.
“Importantly, this was not a ruling on the merits,” said Shannon Liss Riordan, a labor attorney, in a statement. “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.”
The legal challenges to Trump’s name appearing on the Massachusetts ballot argued that Trump is ineligible to serve in the White House under the Constitution’s 14th Amendment 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 Massachusetts challenges followed dozens of similar ones 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 US 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. Supreme Court justices are hearing arguments on the matter on Feb. 8.
Federal law requires state officials
to send absentee ballots to military and overseas voters within 45 days of a federal election.
In Massachusetts, the threeperson state Ballot Law Commission ruled in a 10-page decision Monday that it did not have jurisdiction to bar Trump from the ballot.
In the ruling, the commission said Trump’s name was not appearing on the ballot through a procedure that they have jurisdiction over, such as the submission of nomination papers.
The panel, which is composed of two Democrats and one Republican, considered two nearly identical challenges filed by the group Free Speech For People and by Liss-Riordan, a former Democratic candidate for state attorney general.
The commission’s members are appointed by the governor and meet as needed.
It’s designed to be a five-person bipartisan commission but currently has three members: Francis Crimmins Jr., a Republican and former district court judge who chairs the commission; Joseph Eisenstadt, a Democrat; and Joseph Boncore, a Democrat, former state senator, and one-time head of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council.
Liss-Riordan said last week that Secretary of State William F. Galvin was wrong to place Trump on the ballot after the state Republican Party submitted Trump’s name.
Galvin, a Democrat, has said that state law does not block candidates who would be ineligible to serve from appearing on the ballot before voters.
Amy Carnevale, the Massachusetts Republican Party chairperson, applauded the commission’s decision, which she said will “allow voters to choose their nominee for president.”
“The ill-conceived effort to remove a presidential candidate from the ballot would have undercut our system of democracy,” she said in a statement. “The decision of who Massachusetts should choose as the Republican nominee for president of the United States will now rely squarely with the voters, as it should.”
‘The ill-conceived effort to remove a presidential candidate from the ballot would have undercut our system of democracy.’
AMY CARNEVALE, Massachusetts Republican Party chairperson
Matt Stout of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Danny McDonald can be reached at daniel.mcdonald@globe.com. Follow him @Danny__McDonald.