By arbitrarily excluding candidates from the primary process, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows has disenfranchised voters and effectively controls the outcome of Maine’s upcoming presidential election. This decision is dangerously reminiscent of ploys used in the USSR, Venezuela and North Korea, where dissident candidates were jailed or murdered before elections.

It’s a ruling routinely employed in single-party communist states, but can occur in any government where multiple branches, like the House, Senate and governorship, all lie under one political party’s control.

Beyond this ruling’s illegality and partisanship is the significant irony that Bellows was formerly executive director of the ACLU of Maine. Quoting ACLU’s website: “For nearly 100 years, the ACLU has been our nation’s guardian of liberty, working in courts, legislatures, and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties that the Constitution and the laws of the United States guarantee everyone in this country.”

Per ACLU founder Roger Baldwin, “So long as we have enough people in this country willing to fight for their rights, we’ll be called a democracy.”

One might expect Bellows to maintain strong commitments to this organization’s goals. Yet her decision demonstrates less interest in protecting guaranteed freedoms under the Constitution and Bill of Rights than in settling political and personal vendettas. Donald Trump has never been tried, let alone convicted, of the charges Bellows presented. Further, displaying occasionally surly, condescending, or arrogant behavior doesn’t disqualify him from office.

Maine voters have historically been free, until recently, to vote their candidate of choice.

Darrell Dunn, Andover