On Aug. 22, President Joe Biden will likely nab his party’s nomination at the Democratic National Convention.
There’s just one problem.
The state of Alabama has set its certification deadline a week earlier, and Alabama may have no choice but to leave Biden off the ballot.
Secretary of State Wes Allen, a Republican, warned the Democrats of this possibility Tuesday in a statement.
“If this Office has not received a valid certificate of nomination from the Democratic Party following its convention by the statutory deadline, I will be unable to certify the names of the Democratic Party’s candidates for President and Vice President for ballot preparation for the 2024 general election,” Allen wrote.
Under Alamaba’s current law, presidential nominees must submit their names 82 days before the election.
In 2020, the legislature temporarily changed the certification deadline specifically to accommodate that year’s Republican National Convention. The bill made this one-time change “to accommodate the dates of the 2020 Republican National Convention.”
Alabama Democratic Party Chairman Randy Kelley told the Associated Press that he’s corresponding with the D.N.C. to resolve the matter.
As a solution, the Biden campaign is shooting for a “provisional certification,” and some pundits have suggested that possibility, too.
“State officials have the ability to grant provisional ballot access certification prior to the conclusion of presidential nominating conventions. In 2020 alone, states like Alabama, Illinois, Montana, and Washington all allowed provisional certification for Democratic and Republican nominees,” the Biden campaign said in a statement.
“Joe Biden will be on the ballot in all 50 states.”
We’ll see about that. Biden failed to secure ballot access in New Hampshire’s Democrat primary, but he won as a write-in candidate. He’s also facing scheduling issues in Ohio’s general election.
On Friday, the office of Ohio’s secretary of state sent a letter to the state’s Democrat Party chair to inform her of the issue. Ohio has set its deadline at Aug. 7.
“Pending further clarification, I am left to conclude that the Democratic National Committee must either move up its nominating convention or the Ohio General Assembly must act by May 9, 2024 (90 days prior to a new law’s effective date) to create an exception to this statutory requirement,” the office’s legal counsel said in the letter, first obtained by ABC News.
The Horn editorial team and the Associated Press contributed to this article.