President Joe Biden’s effort to get on the general election ballot in Ohio remains in limbo as state officials have rejected a Democrat proposal to circumvent a looming certification deadline that falls before President Biden officially becomes the party’s presidential nominee.
According to correspondence between Ohio officials and Democratic Party representatives that was viewed by The Epoch Times, state officials have rejected a Democrat proposal to submit a “provisional certification” of President Biden’s nomination before an Aug. 7 deadline to register for the Ohio ballot and then later supply the formal certification documents once his nomination becomes official at the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 19.
The fix, according to Mr. LaRose, was either for Ohio lawmakers to pass an exception or for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to hold its nominating convention earlier.
‘No Alternative Process Is Permitted’
“Doing so here would allow the millions of Ohioans who support President Biden and Vice President Harris to exercise their fundamental constitutional right to meaningfully participate in the presidential election,” Mr. McTigue wrote, adding that there is “no ambiguity” that President Biden would be the party’s nominee since he has already secured the requisite number of pledged delegates in the primaries.
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Mr. McTigue said that applying the deadline to bar President Biden from the ballot would be “plainly unconstitutional” while insisting that the Ohio secretary of state has the authority to accept a provisional certification, which he described as a process that is anyway consistent with Ohio law because President Biden has the required number of delegates.
“The Democratic Party’s notion of providing a ‘provisional certification’ by the statutory deadline simply is not provided for by law,” Mr. Yost’s office said in a letter to Mr. McTigue. “Instead, the law mandates the Democratic Party to actually certify its president and vice-president candidates on or before August 7, 2024. No alternative process is permitted.”
Legislative Last Resort?
Biden campaign officials told ABC News that if the provisional certification tactic fails, they would focus on getting state legislatures to pass extensions, per one of Mr. LaRosa’s recommendations.
Mr. LaRosa said in his original letter to Democrats that legislative action would need to be taken by May 9 for an extension, though this course of action faces unclear prospects in Ohio’s GOP-controlled Legislature.
While Democrats proposed the two identical bills that passed both the Alabama House of Representatives and the Senate on Wednesday, the legislation moved out of committee with support from Republicans, who called it a matter of fairness.
“I’d like to think that if the shoe was on the other foot, that this would be taken care of,“ Alabama state Rep. Sam Givhan, a Republican, said during a committee meeting. ”And I think that Alabamians have a deep sense of fairness when it comes to politics and elections.”
Former President Donald Trump faced a similar issue in Alabama in 2020, with the state Legislature passing legislation to change the certification deadline that year to accommodate the dates of the Republican National Convention.
Like in Ohio, the Alabama secretary of state has maintained lack of authority to accept provisional certification.
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