Richard L Hasen writes:

With news of President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race, some Republicans are claiming he cannot be removed from the presidential ballot in November and that in any case it is undemocratic to do so. The first claim is legally unsupported and the second one is ludicrous. I fully expect the Democrats’ legitimate nominees for president and vice president to be listed on the ballot in November.

Let’s start with the legal issue. The premise of the argument that Biden cannot be “removed” from the ballot is that he’s already “on” the ballot for president. He’s not.

When it comes to which candidates are listed on the general election ballot for president, states set their own rules. Typically, the rules provide that after each recognized political party has had its convention or otherwise gone through its process of choosing a nominee, the party must transmit that information to the states by a certain date so that ballots and other election materials can be prepared.

Joe Biden has not yet been nominated to be president even though he had racked up enough delegates at the upcoming Democratic National Convention to have had an easy time getting the official nomination had he stayed in the race. He was only the presumptive nominee, not the official nominee—nobody is, until there’s a vote. So Biden need not be replaced, because he was never the official candidate. [Continue reading…]