Five voters have filed a petition which is seeking to bar former President Donald Trump from the Illinois Republican primary election ballot slated to hold in March, claiming he is ineligible to hold office because he encouraged and did little to stop the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Africa Today News, New York reports that this fresh petition which is quite similar to those filed in more than a dozen other states, is trying to rely on the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits anyone from holding office who previously has taken an oath to defend the Constitution and then later “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the country or given “aid or comfort” to its enemies.
The 87-page document, signed by five people from around the state, lays out a case that Trump, having lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden, fanned the flames of hardcore supporters who attacked the Capitol on the day Congress certified the election results. The riot left five dead and more than 100 injured.
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Officials in Colorado and Maine have already banned Trump’s name from primary election ballots. Trump asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday to overturn the Colorado Supreme Court ruling from December that stripped his name from the state’s ballot.
The Illinois State Board of Elections had yet to set the petition for hearing Thursday afternoon, spokesperson Matt Dietrich said. The board is set to hear 32 other objections to the proposed ballot at its Jan. 11 meeting.
Recall that a few days ago, Trump was taken off the ballot for the 2024 presidential primary in Maine after a state official determined the Republican frontrunner is ineligible due to his support of insurrection.
Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, announced the decision to remove Trump from the ballot on Thursday, citing a clause in the US Constitution that bars those who have ‘engaged in insurrection or rebellion’ from holding public office.
Bellows pointed out that Trump should be considered ineligible to run as the storming of the US Capitol on January 6 had “occurred at the behest of, and with the knowledge and support of” the former president.