A state commission will meet next week to discuss two challenges seeking to remove Donald Trump from Massachusetts’ Republican presidential primary ballot, state officials said Friday.
The Massachusetts Ballot Law Commission will gather Thursday for what’s known as a pre-hearing conference, a procedural step in which the current three-member panel will decide how to handle two objections, both filed by a high-profile labor lawyer and a liberal group that has challenged the former president’s place on the ballot in multiple states.
The conference is not expected to feature oral arguments, according to a spokesperson for Secretary of State William F. Galvin, who serves as a clerk for the commission. But the commission could schedule a hearing or dismiss the objections if it determines the objections against Trump are not within its jurisdiction.
Both challenges were filed by the group Free Speech For People and attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan, a former candidate for state attorney general. The petitions argue that Trump should not appear on the state’s primary or general election ballots because of his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol when he “engaged in rebellion and insurrection against the Constitution of the United States.”
Among those who signed on to object to Trump’s presence on the ballot was Boston’s former acting mayor Kim Janey, a Democrat.
The filing follows dozens of challenges in other states, including in Maine, where the secretary of state last month barred Trump from the state’s Republican primary. In Colorado, the state Supreme Court ruled Trump was ineligible for the White House under a rarely used clause in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Trump has since appealed both decisions, the latter to the Supreme Court.
Judges in Minnesota and Michigan have ruled against efforts filed by Free Speech For People to remove Trump. The group also filed similar challenges in Oregon and Illinois. Oregon’s Supreme Court on Friday ruled that Trump could remain, for now, on that state’s ballot, noting that the Supreme Court “may resolve one or more contentions” that the challengers had made there.
Massachusetts’ Ballot Law Commission largely works out of the public spotlight, though it figured prominently in the 2002 gubernatorial election when it ruled Mitt Romney was eligible to run for governor, rejecting claims by Democrats that he didn’t meet the state’s residency requirement.
The panel’s members are appointed by the governor and meet as needed. It’s designed to be a five-person commission, but currently has three members: Francis Crimmins Jr., a Republican and former district court judge who chairs the commission; Joseph Eisenstadt, a Democrat; and Joseph Boncore, a Democrat, former state senator, and onetime head of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council.
Galvin has already drawn at random the order of the presidential primary ballots in Massachusetts, with Trump to appear fifth among seven GOP candidates. Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who dropped out of the race on Wednesday, is also still slated to appear on Massachusetts’ GOP ballot, according to Galvin’s office.
Matt Stout can be reached at matt.stout@globe.com. Follow him @mattpstout.