President Joe Biden ends his campaign, what happens next?

Democratic Party should not have problems getting nominee’s name on the ballot, if it acts quickly

• Jordan Wilkie/WITF
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  As the democracy reporter for WITF, I will cover any kind of story that has to do with how we govern ourselves. That will include doing a lot of election coverage about how to access the ballot, how public officials administer elections, the technology used to run and secure elections, and the laws that govern it all.
  
  My work will also include accountability coverage for elected officials that use their positions to then undermine democratic institutions, like the legislators that voted against the certification of the presidential election results on January 6, 2021. If that weren’t enough, I foresee covering some local government decisions, fights over public records and transparency, and some candidate coverage in 2024. Many stories can have a “democracy frame” meant to help us all understand how our governments work and how we can shape them.
  
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  I also like to turn my work phone off. When I do that, I’m looking for rocks to climb, trails to run on (slower and slower, somehow), and new places to visit. I’ve lived in the (extended) South for most of my life, so y’all will hear me say things funny and sometimes my hearing is funny, too, so we’ll figure out this radio thing together.

President Joe Biden speaks at a church service at Mt. Airy Church of God in Christ, Sunday, July 7, 2024, in Philadelphia (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

President Joe Biden is stepping down as the Democratic nominee for president. Now, the party needs to find both a new candidate for president and one for vice president and get both names on ballots in Pennsylvania and across the country.

WITF spoke with state party leadership, a Democratic National Convention rules committee member, a former acting Secretary of the Commonwealth, and election law experts about how and when the new nominees will access the ballot. The consensus is the party should have no problem, assuming it acts quickly. 

Presidential candidates are chosen by the nominating conventions of their parties, not by primaries, according to Veronica Degraffenreid, Pennsylvania’s former acting Secretary of the Commonwealth. She is now a senior manager at the Brennan Center working on issues in elections and government. 

That might be confusing to those who cast a vote for Biden in the primary.

But states’ primaries for president are called “preferential primaries,” where voters actually elect party delegates and indicate who they would like those delegates to support at the convention. 

Since the Democratic Party has not yet held a delegate vote, which usually happens at the convention, it  does not have an official nominee. With Biden out of the race, delegates pledged to him are released to vote for any other candidates the party puts forward. 

Once the party picks its nominees for president and vice president, states will put them on the ballot, according to national experts and groups like the National Task Force on Election Crises. 

The Pennsylvania Department of State confirmed the process for the commonwealth. 

Adam Bonin, a Pennsylvanian election law attorney and a member of the Democratic National Committee’s rules committee, said the ability of a major party to decide its own presidential nominee is well decided in case law as a 1st Amendment right. So, he is not worried about ballot access in this state or any other — with a caveat. 

Waiting until the Democratic National Convention, Aug. 19-22, is a tight timeline to pick a nominee, fill out the needed paperwork in Pennsylvania and 49 other states, and clear any legal challenges in time for county election officials to print and distribute ballots. 

Last week, the DNC scheduled a virtual meeting on Aug. 7 at which its delegates could cast votes and choose the party’s next nominee. 

Bonin said he would prefer a decision before the convention because the “party is understandably trying to minimize any risk of delay or confusion from frivolous RNC lawsuits.” But he said waiting until the convention should still work. 

On Sunday morning, Republican Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, told ABC News he thinks Democrats could run into legal hurdles should they put another candidate on the ballot, though he did not elaborate on any specific challenges. 

Pennsylvania-based elections attorney Lawrence Otter said he expects lawsuits to be filed in the commonwealth and elsewhere that will use creative legal arguments to try to keep the Democratic Party’s next nominee off the ballot. He has worked with major and minor parties across the political spectrum and is currently assisting Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to gain ballot access in several states. 

Once the Democratic Party’s nominees for president and vice-president are chosen, they have 30 days to certify their list of electors to the Department of State, according to a spokesperson. 

Once the new nomination is submitted, objections to that nomination can be filed in court within three days.

The Secretary of the Commonwealth needs to give “each county board of elections a list, as known to exist at that time, of all candidates to be voted on at the November election,” no later than Aug. 27, according to the state’s election administration calendar. 

Counties have some wiggle room in which to prepare their ballots, according to Jeff Greenburg, former Mercer County elections director and senior advisor for election administration at the Committee of 70. Military and overseas ballots go out on September 21, so it would be best for the parties and the courts to settle the nomination issue in time for the counties to build, print, proof and test those ballots, Greenburg said. 

“The other major political party would probably file some type of challenge, but there again, we’re in uncharted territory here,” Otter, the election attorney, said. “Unless there’s some technical violation with the filing of the paperwork, I’m hard pressed to see what a challenge will be. Famous last words.”

The Associated Press and WITF’s democracy reporter Jordan Wilkie are partnering to tell stories about how Pennsylvania elections work, and to debunk misinformation surrounding elections. 

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