Plenty of time before Nov. 5 ballots sent to printer, elections officials and experts say

President Joe Biden 's decision Sunday to step down as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee will not affect the ability of elections officials to properly prepare ballots for the Nov. 5 election .

Even before the president bowed out, elections officials across the state knew they would not be able to put the party's nominee on the ballot until delegates at the Democratic National Committee officials approved the party's presidential and vice presidential nominees when they meet in Chicago on Aug. 19-22. Plus, Florida voters will cast ballots to choose nominees for dozens of other statewide and local races on Aug. 20.

"That's not a problem," Wendy Link, Palm Beach County's elections chief, said Sunday. "Every state, of course, is different, but none of the states have gone to print for their general election ballot yet so that's not going to be a problem."

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Link said the deadline for having all names for the general election ballot is Aug. 24. The Democrats are cutting it close, but she does not anticipate issues.

"That's pretty close to following the end of their convention," she said of the state deadline. "Still, the fact there's this change isn't really going to promote, from an administrative or logistics standpoint, it's not going to affect them.

Link also pointed out that state and local elections officials, including her office, have no role in any of the parties' convention voting processes.

"We're not part of the convention voting process," she said. "The conventions, they nominate and they choose whoever they want, as election officials we're not involved in that voting process. I think sometimes people get confused about that ... We get the names for the ballot after that. So this really doesn't affect us at all."

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Party chooses its delegates so state officials have no role, election law expert said

David Becker, executive director and founder of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, noted the Democratic Party did not have an "official" nominee yet.

"Until the delegates vote, Democratic Party rules say there is no official Democratic nominee," he said. "There is no one to be quote-unquote replaced on the ballot because there is nothing to replace yet."

Like Link, Becker noted that not only does Florida have its primary next month, half the states still have not held their primaries, too, so no state has sent ballots to printers.

Becker said Biden's move is unprecedented, but both major parties have long had rules in place to address a circumstance in which a presumptive nominee might not be able, or willing, to proceed. Those contingencies have guidelines to handle such events before or after a convention has formally nominated them.

Becker added that chatter about litigation or lawsuits to force Biden's name on the ballot simply because he won the vast majority of delegates in state primaries and caucuses is legally senseless. It's the parties, not states, that choose their representatives on ballots, not states.

"These claims are less than frivolous. They are not supported by anything in the law whatsoever," he said. "They amount to what is an attempt by a political party to compel an opposing political party to put someone on the ballot who chooses not to run."

Becker said the recent Trump v. Anderson case, which sought to disqualify Republican nominee Donald Trump from the Colorado ballot based on the 14th Amendment, further "enhances" the case for Democrats to choose new candidates at their convention. In the Trump case, Becker said, all nine justices on the U.S. Supreme Court said they were troubled by the idea that one state, or a group of states, could affect the outcome of an election by choosing to offer ballot access or refuse ballot access to a particular presidential candidate.

"They all agreed that is something no state should have the power to do," Becker said. "So I am 100% confident that whoever the Democratic nominee is, and the vice presidential election as well, will be on the ballot come November."

He stressed that's important to keep in mind given "we are in uncertain times" as no major party presumptive nominee has ever stepped down.

The closest the nation has come to a moment like this was in 1968 when President Lyndon B. Johnson abruptly ended his campaign for re-election early in the primary calendar. At the time, though, Johnson was still far from being the party's presumptive choice.

"This is the first time this has happened in history," Becker said.

Antonio Fins is a politics and business editor at The Palm Beach Post , part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at afins@pbpost.com . Help support our journalism. Subscribe today .

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Plenty of time before Nov. 5 ballots sent to printer, elections officials and experts say