The head of the Maine Republican Party said Friday his team is working on an appeal to the secretary of state’s decision to remove former President Donald Trump from primary ballots.

GOP Chairman Joel Stetkis told WGAN the party is also considering switching back to a caucus system to pick their presidential nominee, so they won’t have to work with Secretary of State Shenna Bellows.

“This political activism by Shenna Bellows, it’s not going to stand,” Stetkis said. “At the party, since yesterday, we’ve been working on an appeal to the Maine Superior Court and we’re also reserving the right to return to a caucus system where Shenna Bellows will have absolutely no say in who Mainers choose for the Republican nominee for president.”

On Thursday, Bellows, a Democrat appointed to her position by the Democratically controlled Legislature, ruled that Trump is ineligible to appear on Maine ballots because he engaged in insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.

The ruling followed a similar decision in Colorado, where the state supreme court opted to remove Trump from ballots.

In other states, courts and election officials have rejected calls to remove him, creating a mishmash of decisions and setting the stage for what’s likely to be a final ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Bellows also took to WGAN Friday morning to explain her decision and the process that led to it.

She said after certifying Trump’s signatures so he could appear on March 5 primary ballots, challengers appealed her decision based on the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment.

Section 3 of the amendment states that “no person” can serve if they previously took the oath of office and “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion.”

The appeals filed with Bellows — which came from two former Republican state senators and one former Democratic senator — triggered a state law requiring her to hold a hearing Dec. 15 to consider both sides of the argument.

“My finding was that the events of Jan. 6, 2021 were unprecedented, tragic, they were an attack not only on the Capitol and government officials, but an attack on the rule of law and an insurrection under the Constitution,” she told the radio station.

She said evidence presented at the hearing convinced her that the insurrection “occurred at the behest of and with the knowledge and support of the outgoing president.”

Bellows decision sparked a flurry of response, with Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins condemning the action and U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-1st District) supporting it.

And in Maine’s more rural 2nd Congressional District, Democratic Rep. Jared Golden issued a statement saying that although he voted to impeach Trump for his actions on Jan. 6, he disagreed with Bellows’ decision.

“I do not believe he should be re-elected as President of the United States,” Golden wrote. “However, we are a nation of laws, therefore until he is actually found guilty of the crime of insurrection, he should be allowed to be on the ballot.”

For his part, Stetkis also announced on Friday that the Maine Republican Party has launched a fundraising effort to “fire Bellows.”

To do that, Republicans need to win more seats in the Legislature. That’s because Maine is one of only four states in which the top election official is chosen by lawmakers.

“The thing we’re working on over the next 10 months is winning that Legislature, having more Republicans in the Legislature than Democrats, and never having to have somebody like Shenna Bellows in a position of power to make these decisions to override the rights of the people,” he said.