Janice R. Andrews
In a surprise change of events, Vice President Kamala Harris was endorsed by President Joe Biden to replace him at the top of the ticket in the 2024 presidential contest. Biden made this announcement on Sunday. While many Americans have been taken aback by this announcement, some Republicans have been discreetly prepared for it, lining up to spend millions on litigation in crucial swing states where they contend local election rules prohibit Biden’s replacement with another Democrat.
Mike Johnson, the House Speaker, weighs in
House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana stated to ABC News some hours before Biden’s announcement that it “would be wrong, and I think unlawful, in accordance to some of these states’ rules for a handful of people to go in a back room and switch it out because they don’t like the candidate any longer.”
“That’s not how this is supposed to work,” Johnson continued. Therefore, I believe that in at least a few of these states, they would encounter some legal obstacles.”
The Heritage Foundation’s Position
In a June memo, the Heritage Foundation, a conservative organization that created Project 2025, a plan to reorganize government functions and eliminate environmental laws in the event that Republicans win the White House again, claimed that certain states’ statutes forbade the removal of candidates from ballots for causes other than death.
“There is the potential for preelection litigation in some states that would make the process difficult and perhaps unsuccessful,” the note said. In spite of this, the majority of election analysts are skeptical that Republican legal challenges will succeed in court.
The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project executive director, Mike Howell, told Newsweek that the organization had put aside millions of dollars for the upcoming legal disputes. “I think there’ll be a compelling case to be made that that shouldn’t happen, and so I think they’ve got legal trouble,” said Howell.
Swing States in Focus
States in the US manage elections, and each has its own set of regulations pertaining to a candidate’s eligibility. For example, Wisconsin’s election law is quite clear about changing a candidate once they’ve been chosen to be on the ticket.
“Nominees who meet the requirements to be on the ballot and file nomination papers are unable to remove their names off the list once they have filed. According to the law, the person’s name must be on the ballot, unless they pass away.
Wisconsin, then, is considered one of the pivotal states in which Republicans want to contest the Democrats’ choice of Biden as their replacement. Georgia and Nevada are among their list of other swing states.
“Three of the expected six most contested states have some potential for preelection litigation aimed at exasperating, with legitimate concerns for election integrity, the withdrawal process for a presidential candidate,” according to a letter sent to Newsweek by Howell.
Experts in Law Voice Doubts
The majority of legal professionals think that because Biden hasn’t yet secured his party’s presidential nominee, the Republican complaints stand little chance of succeeding. Due in part to the absence of strong opposition, Biden was able to secure nearly 99% of the delegates promised by his party during the Democratic primary. But, given that Biden has withdrawn, these delegates are not constitutionally obligated to support him at the Democratic convention.
The party is now without an official nominee as the Democratic National Committee withdrew its intention last week to hold a virtual vote that would have guaranteed Biden’s candidacy ahead of the convention.
Expert on election law and former counsel in the Justice Department David Becker told CNN that the Democratic Party lacked an official nominee both yesterday and today. Democratic Party regulations stipulate that there isn’t an official Democratic nominee until the delegates cast their votes. Since there is nothing to replace yet, there was no candidate to be “replaced” on the ballot.”
The Republican complaints were also rejected by voting rights lawyer Marc Elias, who has successfully fought other issues for Democrats arising from the 2020 election. Elias stated on Sunday in a post on X, “Let me be clear before the media gets rolling: The Democratic nominee for president will be on all 50 state ballots.” “There isn’t anything to oppose legally. Exactly.”
Professor Richard Hansen, who oversees UCLA Law’s Safeguarding Democracy Project, agrees that the legal challenges are unlikely to succeed. He said, “In the unlikely event that a state law would make Biden be forced to be listed on the ballot—I’m not even sure how that could be—then I expect litigation would place the actual nominee of the party on the ballot.”
Outrage on the Right
It has been difficult for many Republicans to comprehend that Democrats would replace Biden with a different candidate at this late date, especially those who doubted the results of the 2020 election. “This is really ridiculous. “At an event at the Republican National Convention last week, Ric Grenell, who served as acting director of national intelligence under Trump, said, ‘You don’t get to dump this [president]—this is what happens in other countries, not in America.’ The media has a responsibility to push back and say, wait a minute.
Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas even went so far as to charge Biden with caving down to pressure from powerful Democrats and wealthy Hollywood patrons. “Joe Biden succumbed to a coup by Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and Hollywood donors, ignoring millions of Democratic primary votes,” Cotton wrote in X.
Republicans who oppose Biden trying to finish out his time as president have requested that he step down, including Trump’s running mate, Senator JD Vance. “If Joe Biden ends his reelection campaign, how can he justify remaining President?” Vance stated on Sunday in a post on X.
Biden announced his withdrawal from the campaign by stating that he will “focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.”
Regarding Donald Trump, who lost to Biden in 2020 and will probably face the nominee selected by the Democratic delegates to succeed him, the most recent events are perceived as only the most recent injustice.
