Disclaimer: This is a Faux News article. That being said, even still, it may be accurately describing the laws on the books in the states mentioned.
The article mentions three states that could pose trouble for the D’s if Biden withdraws:
Wisconsin does not allow Biden to be removed from the ballot unless he dies. Presumably, this means that if Biden withdraws from the race (while still being alive,) then it guarantees that Wisconsin will go to Trump on Election Night, since no other (D) candidate could be on the ticket.
Nevada’s deadline (June 28) has already passed. However, the state allows a candidate to be replaced on the ballot if he has cognitive issues, and Biden could claim that his old age qualifies for that. So there may still be hope for the Ds in Nevada.
Georgia will not allow the Democrats to replace their candidate after September-6. So if Biden steps down between now and then, the Ds could still put a replacement candidate on the Georgia ballot. Any Biden withdrawal after Sept-6, however, would guarantee that Trump carries Georgia on Election Night, since there would be no way for Georgians to vote for a Democrat.
Once again, there is no candidate until a majority of delegates vote at the Democratic National Convention. This is all some combination of BS and FUD.
Don’t worry, I’m sure our federal court system will quickly and decisively set aside these trivial disputes, and they certainly won’t drag it out until the middle of Trump’s third term when the Supreme Court will rule 9-0 that Democrats must submit the names of candidates twelve years in advance.
The real story here is not “will these legal shenanigans work.” The real story should be “how obvious does the Right have to make it that they’ve entirely abandoned any semblance of caring about democracy and want to monkeywrench the election and disenfranchise millions of voters by any means necessary.”
State election laws should not be taken lightly. Legal challenges should be welcome. If the legitimacy of the election is ever in doubt we wont know until these challenges clear the courts, upheld or otherwise.
What are you saying? Ignore the individual State laws that might be violated? How is taking advantage of existing laws by requiring that they be enforced “anti-democratic” in your eyes? Legal shananigans…sheesh.
It appears, though, that several States have laws which don’t take that into account, apparently having been written by people who never dreamed that someone would try to throw a major party candidate off the ballot.
It would obviously be a setback if these lawsuits prevail, but it’s certainly not true that the Democratic candidate couldn’t win those States, they would just have to do so as a write-in candidate. Sometimes obvious voter suppression moves piss people off so much that they actually increase voter turnout, despite the addition of extra hoops to jump through.
Actually, couldn’t they just keep Biden’s name on the ballot in those States? Everyone would know that they were really voting for Electors who would vote for the actual Democratic candidate.
At least one of the states mentioned in the OP (Nevada) has a faithless elector law in which the elector is deemed to have resigned and rendered their vote null and void if they vote against the winning candidate. You can bet your bottom dollar the Republicans would do everything in their power to force those electors to vote for Biden instead of the “actual candidate”.
IANACL, but I don’t see how that can possibly be Constitutional. It’s one thing to make voting for the wrong candidate a crime, which some States have done, but a State law can’t render an Electoral vote “null and void”. Of course, with the current SCOTUS, we can’t rely on that.
My experience in looking into this issue in the last couple weeks is that the state laws do take it into account, and people are simply citing the wrong laws out of ignorance or something else.
E.g. they’re looking at the deadline for filing as an independent candidate, or the deadline for a nominee for a state office to withdraw.
These lawsuits are attempting to throw a major party Presidential candidate off the ballot on a technicality based on an absurd law. So, yeah, anti-democratic.
The law as written is absurd. The deadline to remove Biden from the Democratic line on the ballot in Wisconsin and Nevada has already passed – but the Convention hasn’t voted, so Biden isn’t even officially the Democratic candidate yet! How does that make sense?
Then have the laws changed. Every state has election laws that could be considered absurd or anti-democratic under microscope or in very specific uncomfortable situations. That doesn’t make them any less valid. Should we not have any laws regarding elections? One big free-for-all? These laws arent Biden or Democrat specific, they work both ways.