Maine lawmakers quickly vote down Republican-led effort to impeach secretary of state

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows easily survived an attempt by Republicans in the state legislature to impeach her for removing former President Donald Trump from the 2024 Republican primary ballot.

On Tuesday, Maine Public Radio reported that a resolution to launch a special investigative committee into Bellows — the first step toward impeachment — failed on a party-line vote, with 60 votes in favor and 80 votes against. Only one Republican voted with Democrats in opposition to the bill. Rep. Katrina Smith urged her fellow Republicans to vote for impeachment, and roughly half a dozen GOP lawmakers spoke on the record in favor of the resolution.

"There has been no crime, there has been no impeachment, there has been no conviction [of Trump] in a court of law," Smith said. "She is not a judge, she is not a jury. And I believe that the people feel absolutely disenfranchised and she has done a great disservice to the state of Maine and to the opinion of how elections are run."

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Had the resolution passed, it would have launched a committee to investigate Bellows for "allegations of misconduct and malfeasance." At the conclusion of the investigation, the Maine House would vote on articles of impeachment, and if that passed, the Maine Senate would hold a vote on whether to convict Bellows and remove her from office.

However, because both chambers of the Maine legislature are controlled by Democrats, and because the secretary of state is chosen by the legislature rather than elected by the voting public, it's almost assured that any secretary of state will come from the same party that controls the Maine legislature.

"This resolution is before us not because she did anything wrong but because some of us don't like her decision," said Democratic state representative Adam Lee. "If we are displeased that the first stop in the process is the secretary of state, it's this body that can change that — not through impeachment but through law."

Bellows, for her part, has maintained that Maine law required her to issue an administrative decision on Trump's eligibility for the ballot after several voters challenged his standing to hold the office of president. In her decision, Bellows stated that Trump was not qualified to be president based on his attempt to disrupt Congress' certification of Electoral College votes on January 6, 2021. Bellows said Trump's actions were a violation of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment in the US Constitution, which explicitly bans candidates from any "civilian or military" office who have "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" against the United States, or "given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof."

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