Maine’s secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, has filed a notice of appeal indicating she will challenge a state judge’s ruling that former president Donald Trump may remain on the state’s primary ballot pending the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision regarding a similar case in Colorado.

Bellows, a Democrat, unilaterally undertook to boot Trump from the ballot on the theory that he is an insurrectionist and thus that his disqualification is required by Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. I won’t rehash the flaws and unseemly partisanship of her decision, which have been well covered by NR’s editors. I’m writing to correct an error I made in the podcast, because I relied on an erroneous report rather than reading the Maine court decision for myself.

I thought that Maine’s supreme court had stayed Secretary Bellows’s decree. That was wrong. The decision was made by state superior court justice Michaela Murphy. She did not disturb Bellows’s findings regarding Trump. Rather, she remanded the matter to Bellows with instructions to take no action until after the Supreme Court rules on the Colorado case. That case is on a fast track, with oral argument before the justices scheduled for February 8. Nevertheless, Maine’s primary is on March 5 (part of Super Tuesday), and the state must thus mail ballots to overseas voters by tomorrow (Saturday).

In the proceedings before Judge Murphy, Bellows agreed that her ruling removing Trump from the ballot should be stayed in light of the Supreme Court’s decision to review the Colorado case on an expedited basis. What she objects to is Murphy’s directive that she await the Supreme Court’s ruling and then, within 30 days, issue a new ruling based on the high court’s guidance.

Clearly, the secretary is bothered by the status quo, in which Trump appears on the ballot — the fear being that if the justices take too long to decide and then agree that Trump is disqualified, Maine voters would be confused by the presence on the ballot of a disqualified candidate. Bellows claims to want to give the state’s top court — called the “Law Court” in this context — the opportunity to weigh in.

The Law Court would be foolish to depart from Judge Murphy’s decision, which recognized that (a) the matter is fraught with questions of federal law that the Supreme Court should (and is likely to) resolve, (b) what makes sense under the circumstances is to wait until the high court weighs in, and (c) the risk that voter confusion could be greater if multiple administrative officials or judges act prior to the high court’s ruling.