Trump will be on NC ballots for 2024 primary after elections officials dismiss complaint
Former President Donald Trump will be allowed to appear on the ballot in North Carolina during the 2024 primary elections, state elections officials decided Tuesday, a boost for the Republican's reelection effort.
The State Board of Elections, made up of political appointees of three Democrats and two Republicans, voted 4-1 to dismiss a complaint by a retired federal government lawyer in Stokes County seeking to disqualify Trump from running for office.
There has been a push nationwide to disqualify Trump, who served one term as president before his loss in 2020, from ever returning to office, with similar challenges filed in multiple other states. The 2024 Republican presidential primary front-runner faces four counts in a case that accuses him of conspiring to overturn the results of his election loss to President Joe Biden, in addition to other ongoing criminal cases.
The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution bans anyone from holding federal office who has supported an insurrection against the government. Trump critics have cited the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress as disqualifying him based on that rule.
"Trump engaged in an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, after having previously taken an oath as the top officer of the United States to support the Constitution," the complaint said. It was filed by Stokes County voter Brian Martin, a retired attorney who previously worked as assistant solicitor general — one of the federal government's highest-ranking lawyers — in the administrations of Republican presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
His complaint adds that in the lead up to the violence that day, "Trump directed the crowd to march on the Capitol and said he would join them," and that "Trump did so even though he knew he had lost the election."
Martin said in an interview Tuesday he was disappointed that the board rejected his request to disqualify Trump and was still thinking about whether to appeal it and keep fighting. He said they made an illogical decision, giving up their authority to say whether someone is eligible to run for president.
"I thought it was remarkable that they determined the Republican Party can list any candidate for president of the United States, and the board has no authority to determine if they’re qualified for office," he told WRAL News. "So essentially a party could nominate a 21-year-old, or a foreign national, and there’s nothing they can do.”
The board members noted that they weren't necessarily ruling that Trump can be on the ballot for the general election in North Carolina. If he wins the GOP nomination, board members said during Tuesday's meeting, there could be another challenge filed seeking to keep him from running then. They just don't believe they have the legal authority to keep him — or anyone else given the green light by their political party — from appearing on the primary ballot.
Polls show Trump is the runaway favorite to win the GOP nomination for the third straight presidential election. On Tuesday the state elections board approved seven Republican presidential candidates to appear on the ballot: Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and others.
In the run-up to the 2022 elections the State Board of Elections had considered a similar complaint against then-U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn, although in that case the issue resolved itself without legal action when Cawthorn lost the Republican primary election.
2024 primary shapes up
North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore, a Republican who's running for Congress in 2024, spoke in defense of Trump and the board's decision not to remove him from the ballot.
"The complaint filed with the NCSBE against President Trump has entirely no merit and has one aim — to deny North Carolina voters their Constitutional right to decide for themselves who our next president will be," Moore said in a statement Tuesday. "Rather than let the voters decide, some activists would prefer to effectively silence the former president."
In Tuesday's 4-1 vote to dismiss the complaint, the lone no vote came from board member Siobhan Millen, a Democrat. She said the board was "hiding behind a technicality" to avoid taking up the issue now instead of waiting until after the primary.
Paul Cox, the election board's top attorney, noted that North Carolina law is vague on the topic, but that the Minnesota Supreme Court recently ruled in a similar case that elections officials there couldn't ban Trump from being listed as a candidate for the primary election.
The elections board didn't only approve the list of candidates for the GOP primary on Tuesday. The Libertarian Party's 10 candidates were also approved. And the board approved the North Carolina Democratic Party's request to put only Biden on the ballot for the primary election. One of the other Democrats challenging Biden, U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN), has slammed the decision.
"If Joe Biden is the best candidate to defeat Donald Trump and lead us to a safer, more affordable future, let him compete for that privilege without his supporters suppressing and disenfranchising millions of voters," Phillips wrote in a statement.
