Biden could be left off Alabama general election ballot, state election official warns  | #elections | #alabama

Politics

By Victor Nava

Alabama’s top elections official warned Tuesday that President Biden’s name could be left off state ballots in November because his nomination to be the Democratic Party’s standard-bearer won’t be certified until after a key deadline. 

Alabama is at least the second state where Biden, 81, is at risk of not appearing on presidential ballots because of the timing of his formal nomination for re-election.

“It has recently come to my attention that the Democratic National Convention is currently scheduled to convene on August 19, 2024, which is after the State of Alabama’s statutory deadline for political parties to provide a certificate of nomination for President and Vice President on August 15, 2024,” Republican Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen wrote in a letter to state Democratic Party Chairman Randy Kelley and Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison.

Alabama law requires political parties to certify their candidates “no later than the 82nd day preceding the day fixed for the election.”

“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 warned. 

A Biden campaign spokesperson told The Post that it expects Alabama to grant the president provisional ballot access certification, as several states did for both Biden and former President Donald Trump in 2020.

“Joe Biden will be on the ballot in all 50 states,” the Biden campaign spokesperson said in a statement. “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 letter comes after an Ohio elections official issued a similar warning to the state Democrats last week, reminding them that the president risks being left off ballots in the Buckeye State unless the Democratic National Convention is moved up or an “exception” is made for Biden. 

In Ohio, a similar scenario played out before the 2020 election, when both the Republican and Democratic conventions were scheduled after the state’s ballot deadline, leading state lawmakers to approve a one-time change in state law, moving the cutoff date to 60 days before the general election. 

Last month, a Florida Atlantic University/Mainstreet Research poll showed Trump leading Biden in Ohio by 11 percentage points and in Alabama by 20 percentage points.