What happens in the Democratic nomination now that Biden has left the race

(CNN) — President Joe Biden has decided not to run for reelection, following his disastrous debate performance last month and his failure since to convince his fellow Democrats that he can defeat former President Donald Trump in the fall.

Democrats now have an unprecedented challenge given the traditional primary season has long since ended.

Biden on Sunday endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to be the Democrats’ nominee this fall, but he can’t automatically make her the candidate.

As we first wrote back in February, individual delegates will now select the party’s nominee on the convention floor (or, potentially, during a virtual roll call).

These delegates aren’t just pledged to vote for Biden; they’re also approved by his campaign. So it will largely be Biden backers who will be picking his replacement.

Who could replace Biden?

The president, in a post on X, endorsed Harris. But there would be other potential candidates who previously argued they could run a more effective campaign against Trump.

Would someone like California Gov. Gavin Newsom – who offered unqualified support for Biden in the wake of Thursday’s debate – challenge Harris at the convention? Settling on a replacement could be divisive and ugly. It would be up to the delegates to decide, in a series of votes after frantic lobbying, who to pick.

On the Democratic side, there is also another group to consider: the “superdelegates,” a group of about 700 senior party leaders and elected officials who are automatically delegates to the convention based on their position. Under normal party rules, they can’t vote on the first ballot if they could swing the nomination, but they’re free to vote on subsequent ballots. However, it isn’t exactly clear how those rules would be applied in this case.

The number of superdelegates can also shift if one dies or resigns. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, the longtime Texas congresswoman, died July 19, reducing the number of superdelegates by one.

How would other candidates get into the race?

Under party rules, candidates must meet certain requirements to have their names placed into nomination to be the party’s presidential candidate.

They must gather hundreds of signatures from delegates (at least 300, but not more than 600) from several states (no more than 50 of the signatures may come from one state). No delegate can sign more than one petition, and signatures can come from either pledged or super delegates.

Candidates also must meet a series of requirements laid out in party rules, including that they are a “bona fide Democrat” and that they have “established substantial support for their nomination as the Democratic candidate” for president.

While this determination is to be made by the DNC national chairperson, the party has not yet released more details on how exactly the process would work.

How does the nomination vote work?

Democrats are in the process of setting up a system to conduct their presidential nomination vote remotely before the convention.

Under a proposed plan outlined Friday to the convention rules committee, it would be up to party chair Jaime Harrison and convention chair Minyon Moore to set a specific date for voting to begin, but it would be no earlier than August 1.

Under the plan presented Friday, delegates would get 24 hours’ notice before voting begins, and voting would take place via digital ballots emailed to delegates, similarly to how the party conducted its virtual voting before the largely remote 2020 convention. In 2020, voting ran for nearly two weeks; and according to Andrew Binns, a senior adviser to the convention, of the 4,747 ballots it sent out, only 14 were not returned.

This year, delegates would also have a set window of time to vote, but the party did not specify how long that period would be.

During the meeting, party officials continued to call for Biden to be officially nominated before August 7, to avoid the risk of litigation over his access to the ballot in Ohio. While the state pushed the deadline back to September 1 earlier this year, the new law won’t take effect until the end of August.

However, the committee did not take any steps to approve the plan at Friday’s meeting. Members were planning on meeting next week to do so, and given the news, it’s not yet clear if the party will be sticking with the remote vote plan, or if it will scrap it and allow the formal vote to happen on the convention floor.

Are Democratic delegates required to vote for the candidate who won them?

Under Democratic party rules, pledged delegates “shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them.” However, the candidates’ right of review means that delegates can be expected to be loyal to the candidate to whom they’re pledged.

But now that Biden is no longer a candidate, his delegates are free to vote for whomever they’d like. He doesn’t need to formally “release” his delegates.

How does the candidate for vice president get determined?

Under party rules, the election of a candidate for vice president is conducted in largely the same manner as the vote for president, except that superdelegates are allowed to vote on every ballot for vice president.

In practice, however, there is typically not a roll call vote for vice president, with the presidential nominee’s choice for the position typically nominated by acclamation.

The party’s presentation to the rules committee did not include any detail on how the vice presidential nominee would be determined under the virtual roll call proposal.

In 2020, when the party used a similar virtual roll call, the Democratic process functionally allowed the winning candidate for president (Biden) to nominate the vice presidential candidate (Harris) without the need for an additional roll call.

Will the Democratic nominee have any trouble getting on the ballot?

After the convention nominates a candidate, many election law experts say they won’t have much or any trouble getting on all 51 presidential ballots.

Unlike independent candidates, the Democratic and Republican nominees for president don’t need to gather signatures to appear on the ballot.

Instead, the major parties, by virtue of their popularity, enjoy automatic ballot access in every state. While the process varies by state, the parties typically submit their nominees’ names (and the names of candidates for presidential elector) to the state.

Biden hasn’t been officially nominated and the party hasn’t submitted his name to state officials. So the new nominee wouldn’t be, in an official sense, replacing Biden. Whoever the delegates select will be the Democratic nominee and they shouldn’t have an issue taking the Democratic ballot line.

However, that doesn’t mean that there wouldn’t be the possibility of litigation, even if it would be unlikely to succeed.

This story has been updated following Biden’s decision to drop out of the race.

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