Washington state has just joined Ohio and Alabama in signifying through election officials that President Joe Biden could be left off their general election ballots due to conflicts between the dates of the Democratic National Committee’s nominating convention and state ballot deadlines. The Evergreen state, though, appears to have already proposed a way for the Democrat to remain eligible.
On Thursday, the director of elections at the office of Washington’s Secretary of State sent a letter — obtained by ABC News — to DNC Chair Jamie Harrison, warning that the deadline for ballot certification under state law falls on Aug. 20, the day after the DNC convenes in Chicago to nominate their presidential and vice presidential selections.
Stuart Holmes, the Director of Elections under Democratic Secretary Steve Hobbs, signaled that their office would make an exception for the party if they submit a provisional certification of nomination no later than Aug. 20, according to the letter.
This comes as Ohio and Alabama’s Republican Secretaries of State over the past week have indicated they’d enforce similar state election codes in a way that experts have said is unprecedented and perhaps partisan in nature.
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose and Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen have alerted Democrats about comparable conflicts between their respective state’s deadlines and the scheduling of the DNC convention in mid-August, cautioning that Biden’s nomination in Chicago comes too late to get on their general election ballots.
In Ohio, LaRose flagged in a letter last week that the DNC’s convention, set to begin on Aug. 19, would miss their Aug. 7 ballot certification deadline. In Alabama, Allen sent a letter to Democrats on Tuesday warning that their Aug. 15 cutoff would occur before the convention.
This scheduling conflict isn’t a new obstacle — a late August convention has occurred several times in past years for both parties — but states have historically avoided banning major party candidates from their ballots by either easily granting provisional ballot access, the way Washington is suggesting, or working through their legislatures to allow certification extensions.
But now, the red-state officials, experts say, are uniquely leveraging the issue against Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominees, even as their predecessors made exceptions for former President Donald Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence to appear on their ballots when the when the RNC convention came too late for their certification.
“This has not been something anybody has ever dealt with. … [The GOP Secretaries] just cooked it up. No, this has never happened before,” Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a member of the Democratic National Committee, said.
Richard Winger, a ballot access expert and political analyst, agreed.
“These deadlines don’t exist for partisan reasons. … But it is kind of partisan this year,” he told ABC News.
“You have to go all the way back to 1964 to find a state that kept a major party presidential candidate off the ballot, and that had nothing to do with deadlines. … There’s never ever since been a major party candidate who was off the ballot in any state,” Winger added.
Do Democrats have a game plan to get Biden on the ballot?
Now, the Biden campaign, along with Democratic officials, are looking into ways to ensure the president will appear on the ballot in front of Ohio and Alabama voters.
In response to the news from Ohio and Alabama, Biden’s reelection campaign has maintained that “Joe Biden will be on the ballot in all…
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