A complaint filed to keep former President Donald Trump off the ballot in North Carolina’s March 5 primary election was dismissed by the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) Tuesday with a vote of 4-1, with board member Siobhan Millen voting no.
Brian Martin, an attorney and businessman from Sandy Ridge, Stokes County, filed the complaint on Monday, stating that Trump was not qualified to run as a candidate because he engaged in the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, after having previously taken an oath to support the Constitution as an officer of the United States, thereby violating Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Martin’s 27-page complaint also offered the NCSBE a suggestion: to read, if they chose, an article by two conservative law professors from the University of Pennsylvania, who are “active members of The Federalist Society, a group advocating ‘originalism’ — the method of interpreting The Constitution by its plain meaning at the time it was drafted and ratified.”
Attorney Paul Cox, counsel for NCSBE, said that North Carolina’s law was too vague on the subject, and the board doesn’t have the proper authority to decide who to keep off the ballot at this point.
“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,” said North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore, R-Cleveland, who is running for Congress next year, in a press release and on X. “Rather than let the voters decide, some activists would prefer to effectively silence the former President. I wholeheartedly condemn this malicious attempt to interfere with our elections here in North Carolina.”