https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/28/politics/trump-maine-14th-amendment-ballot/index.html
Maine’s top election official has removed former President Donald Trump from the state’s 2024 ballot, in a surprise decision based on the 14th Amendment’s “insurrectionist ban.”
Primaries use public voting infrastructure, at least in my state, so I can see the argument that courts can decide who is a legal primary candidate.
The risk is what the GOP is threatening to do in Colorado. If Trump isn't allowed on the public voting infrastructure, they'll just caucus instead.
In which case, it's likely that independents won't be allowed to participate.
So for primaries, it's likely to have the opposite effect, more likely for a Trump candidacy, by stirring up the base and locking out potential moderate voters.
For general election, Maine and Colorado don't practically matter, they were never going to go to trump anyway. So for these two states, it's ammunition for a persecution complex without good result. For it to be a good strategic win, it would have to be some states that Trump actually has a chance of winning.
The risk is what the GOP is threatening to do in Colorado. If Trump isn't allowed on the public voting infrastructure, they'll just caucus instead.
They have every right to. Again, because a primary isn't an election for office, it's a private entity (in this case the GOP) being allowed to borrow public infrastructure to help them decide who they want to back for the actual election.
Same reason super delegates for the Dems weren't illegal, even if they were in bad faith.
It's perfectly in their rights, but not what an effort seeking to prevent a Trump candidacy should want.
If the state ruled Trump can't be on the primary ballot because he's ineligible to be president, then he can't be on the main ballot because he's ineligible to be president. That means no Republican will be on the ballot, and that's really bad for the Republicans.
Trump missing from the ballot in Colorado and Maine would not make a difference, they don't vote Republican in the general election anyway.
You'd need this to happen in a vaguely competitive state. Judging from the progress of various attempts, that doesn't seem likely, unless the supreme Court declared it nationally, but I don't see that happening even if they let Colorado and Maine stand.
So you have got a bunch of Trump die hards inspired to "fight like hell" in the face of what they describe as an injustice, all to block him in a state he wasn't going to win anyway.
Now if you pulled this off in some place like Georgia, Florida, Texas, then sure, that would be quite the blow and may persuade the GOP voters to really around some other candidate that would be more tolerable. But Colorado and Maine aren't going to really help general election results.