Trump stays on Washington primary ballot, judge rules
Ballots are processed at the King County Elections headquarters in Renton for Washington’s primary election on March 10, 2020. (Dorothy Edwards/Crosscut)
A Thurston County judge dismissed a challenge to disqualify former president Donald Trump from the ballot of the March 12 presidential primary.
In a hearing Thursday morning, Thurston County Superior Court Judge Mary Sue Wilson ruled that Secretary of State Steve Hobbs' office made no errors in including Trump on the primary ballot. In Washington, state law allows any voter to challenge a candidate’s right to be on a ballot on several grounds, including felony convictions, election officer misconduct and eligibility for the office.
Eight Kitsap County voters had challenged Trump’s inclusion on the primary ballot, arguing that the former president should be excluded based on his eligibility outlined by federal law. They cited Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which disqualifies government office holders who have supported an insurrection from holding a federal office. Trump was impeached by Congress in 2021 on a charge of inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection, but was acquitted by the Senate, where a simple majority voted to convict – 10 votes short of the two-thirds supermajority necessary for conviction. The conviction vote was made largely along party lines, though seven Republicans voted with Democrats to convict.
Wilson also declined to remove Trump’s name from the general election ballot, saying it would be “premature” to do so at this time. But Wilson added that her decision doesn’t block any future challenges to Trump’s inclusion on November’s ballot.
Washington is one of 35 states where Trump’s eligibility to run for president in 2024 has been challenged. The challenges either have been dismissed or rejected in at least 15 states. Two of the states, Maine and Colorado, disqualified the former president from their ballots, though those decisions are under appeal. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear the Colorado case on Feb. 8.
Washington’s Democratic and Republican parties use the results of the primary as one factor to select state delegates to their national conventions, where the parties choose their general-election presidential and vice-presidential candidates. Primary voters in Washington must choose only one political party on their return envelope and then vote for one person in that party’s slate of candidates.
The state Republican Party named Donald J. Trump, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Chris Christie as its primary candidates; and the state Democratic Party named Joseph R. Biden Jr., Dean Phillips, and Marianne Williamson as its candidates.