Joe Biden campaign hints at litigation if Alabama keeps president off ballot

President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign Wednesday urged Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen to put the president on the ballot, and hinted at litigation if he didn’t. 

In a letter to Mike Jones, general counsel for the Alabama Secretary of State’s office, Birmingham Attorney Barry Ragsdale, representing the campaign, said the party could provisionally certify Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris as Democratic Party’s nominees by an Aug. 15 deadline.

“This proposal avoids the constitutional problems that would arise if your office were to interpret [the statute’s] certification deadline to preclude President Biden and Vice President Harris from appearing on the Alabama general election ballot,” the letter stated.

The letter also stated that the proposal wouldn’t prevent Alabamians from exercising “their fundamental constitutional right to meaningfully participate in the presidential election.”

Allen on Thursday doubled-down on his stance.

“On January 16, 2023, I took an oath to uphold Alabama law and that is what I am going to do. My office will accept all certifications that comply with Alabama [law]. That statute does not provide for ‘provisional certifications’ or any other exceptions,” he said in a statement to the Reflector.

Allen, a Republican, sent a letter to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Alabama Democratic Party on Tuesday citing a deadline 82 days ahead of the general election to submit a list of certified candidates. The Secretary of State said they must submit those names by August 15, just a few days before the Democratic National Convention is scheduled to convene on August 19.

Without that, Allen wrote, the president and vice president may not appear on the state’s ballot in November.

“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 in a letter to Randy Kelley, chair of the Alabama Democratic Party.

Ragsdale, who often takes legal cases involving the Democratic Party, hinted at legal action if Allen did not accept the party’s provisional ballot proposal.  The letter states that precedent establishes that a court would interpret state law “in a manner that ensures constitutionally-protected associational rights are not violated.”

“Here, a court would have little difficulty finding that strict application of the eighty-two-day deadline imposes a severe restriction on President Biden and Vice President Harris’s access to the ballot,” Ragsdale wrote.“If strictly enforced, the deadline would prevent one of the two major party presidential candidates from appearing on the general election ballot—an unjust and unconstitutional result.”

Ragsdale also wrote that past practice in Alabama indicated exceptions have been made and emphasized the need for consistency in electoral procedures.

The Republican National Committee submitted a provisional certification in 2020 stating that the party “anticipates that Donald Trump and Mike Pence will be nominated as the Republican Party’s candidates for President and Vice President, respectively,” the letter stated.

The Alabama Legislature, controlled by the Republican Party since 2010, approved a bill in 2020 extending the deadline to allow certification of Trump and Pence, but the Trump campaign still missed the deadline as the legislation “still did not allow the Republican Party to timely file its certificate of nomination.” The Secretary of State accepted a provisional certification that was submitted a week before the convention ended, and the official nomination happened during the convention after the certification date.

Jeannie Negrón Burniston, communications director for the Alabama Republican Party said that is not correct.

“Under Alabama law, political parties are allowed to file an amended certification by a specific deadline,” she said in an email, adding that current Alabama allows an amended certification to be filed up to 76 days prior to the election. “The Biden campaign will miss both the certification deadline and the amended certification deadline under current state law.”

She said that the Alabama Republican Party and Donald Trump’s campaign met the deadline on Aug. 20, 2020 after the legislation passed moving the deadline.

A message seeking comment was left with Ragsdale.

Democrats in the Legislature are planning to file bills to extend the deadline for Biden and Harris. Sen. Merika Coleman, D-Pleasant Grove, filed a bill Thursday morning give the party more time to certify the candidates. Luke Kiszla, assistant to the House Minority Leader Anthony Daniels, D-Huntsville, said the Democratic House leader also plans to file a bill on those lines.

Both bills face a Republican supermajority in the House and the Senate. It takes five legislative days to pass a bill; after Thursday, there will be eight days left in the 2024 regular session.

Ragsdale noted in his letter that Biden and Harris are already the presumptive nominees of the Democratic Party.

“While there are a variety of ways that Alabama could implement a certification process without violating the associational rights of candidates, their supporters, and political parties, the application of an unnecessarily long certification deadline is not one of them,” the letter concluded.