Briefs

Law experts refute House Speaker: No legal issues exist before official nominee is ratified

July 22, 2024 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — ELECTION LAW EXPERTS REFUTED GOP House Speaker Michael Johnson’s claim that Vice President Kamala Harris replacing President Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket could pose legal challenges, reports the Daily News. Johnson made the claim hours before Biden announced on Sunday that he was ending his re-election campaign. Law experts said this would only hold true if Biden was the official nominee, and that is not the case until the conclusion of the Democratic National Convention, set to take place in just less than a month. “Biden was never the official nominee of the Democratic Party,” election law expert Rick Hasen told the Daily News in an email Sunday evening. Responding briefly to an allegation attributed to Johnson that the Democrats would decide their nominee in a back room, Democratic National Party Chair Jaime Harrison stated, “In the coming days, the party will undertake a transparent and orderly process to move forward. This process will be governed by established rules and procedures of the party. Our delegates are prepared to take seriously their responsibility in swiftly delivering a candidate to the American people.”

History shows that it was the Republican Party from a century ago that met in a back room in Chicago to nominate Warren G. Harding as president in 1920. Primary elections as a nominating vehicle are more recent, starting in 1972 as part of reforms meant to open elections to rank-and-file party members.

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