What Virginia’s Election Rules say About Parties Swapping Nominees

As Democrats around the country debate whether the party can still win with President Joe Biden leading the ticket, they have roughly two months left to make a change on Virginia’s presidential ballot, according to state election law.

In Virginia, the last day for political parties to get a nominee on the ballot is Sept. 6, according to a list of deadlines published by the Virginia Department of Elections.

The state’s newly expanded 45-day voting window begins Sept. 20, which means ballots need to be finalized and printed before that key date.

Biden — who has emphatically rejected calls from within his own party to step aside after his faltering debate performance against former President Donald Trump — easily won Virginia’s Democratic presidential primary on Super Tuesday. However, he won’t officially be the party’s nominee until later this summer.

The Democratic National Convention is scheduled to run Aug. 19-22. If Biden were to change his mind and step down as the party’s presidential candidate, Democrats would still have a short window after the convention before they’d have to finalize their presidential ticket in Virginia.

The Sept. 6 deadline is tied to a state law requiring political parties to certify their presidential nominees “no later than 5:00 p.m. on the sixtieth day before the presidential election.”

As the process pushes further into September, the need to finalize and print millions of paper ballots poses both logistical and legal challenges for any last-minute efforts to swap out a presidential nominee.

Virginia law gives political parties the option of choosing a backup candidate if a nominee withdraws or dies in some elections. But that’s only an option well in advance of Election Day, making Sept. 6 the clearest deadline for a candidate switch to happen.

The second presidential debate is scheduled for Sept. 10, just as Virginia ballots are being printed for the start of early voting 10 days later.

by Graham Moomaw, Virginia Mercury

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