Alabama’s top election official, Wes Allen, issued a warning to the state’s Democratic Party regarding the potential exclusion of President Joe Biden from the general election ballot due to a critical deadline. Allen pointed out that the Democratic National Convention is scheduled after Alabama’s statutory deadline for political parties to submit a certificate of nomination for President and Vice President.
Despite securing enough delegates to clinch the Democratic presidential nomination, Biden won’t be formally nominated until the Democratic National Convention in August, which is after Alabama’s deadline. According to Alabama law, presidential candidates must be certified at least 82 days before the election, slated for November 5.
Biden (Credits: CNN)
Allen emphasized that without a valid certificate of nomination from the Democratic Party by the statutory deadline, he would be unable to certify the party’s candidates for President and Vice President for the 2024 general election.
In response to Alabama’s warning, a Biden campaign spokesperson expressed confidence that Biden would be on the ballot in all 50 states, expecting Alabama to grant provisional ballot-access certification as it did during the 2020 election.
However, Alabama’s secretary of state’s office refuted the notion of provisional certifications for candidates under state law, emphasizing that all candidates must comply with current Alabama law to gain ballot access.
This warning from Alabama’s secretary of state echoes a similar situation in Ohio, where the secretary of state’s office warned the state’s Democratic Party about the deadline for certifying presidential candidates. Ohio requires certification 90 days before the general election, posing a challenge to the timing of the Democratic National Convention.
In 2020, Ohio lawmakers made an exception for both parties by moving the state’s ballot deadline to 60 days before the general election when the timing of the conventions posed an issue.
