The Daily Fuckup

Donald Trump’s Maine ballot fight took a sharp procedural turn on Jan. 24, 2024, when the Maine Supreme Judicial Court dismissed his appeal as interlocutory. The court did not reach the merits of whether Trump could remain on the ballot. Instead, it stopped at the threshold question of whether the case was ready for appellate review.

The timing matters. A motion to clarify was filed on Jan. 23, 2024, but the next day the Law Court concluded the appeal was not in the proper posture for decision. That meant the state’s highest court did not issue a ruling on the underlying eligibility dispute at that stage. It resolved the case on procedure, not substance.

The ballot challenge itself came after Maine’s secretary of state concluded that Trump was ineligible under the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause. Trump had asked the courts to undo that decision, but the Law Court’s Jan. 24 dismissal left the eligibility question unresolved in that forum. Any later review would have to come through a procedurally proper path.

For Trump’s campaign, the decision still kept the Maine dispute in the spotlight even as it narrowed the immediate case. The issue remained tied to his broader effort to get on ballots in states where officials and judges were weighing whether his conduct around Jan. 6 disqualified him under the Constitution. But as of Jan. 24, the specific Maine appeal had ended on jurisdictional grounds before the court ever got to that bigger question.