As has been reported, Ohio and Alabama election laws require qualified parties to certify the names of their presidential and vice-presidential nominees by the first half of August. This creates a problem for the Democratic Party, which is holding its convention this year in the second half of August. Yet the Democratic dates are not unusual.

In the last seventeen prior presidential election years (1956 through 2020), in twelve of them, at least one of the major parties held its convention entirely in the second half of August, or in early September.

The Alabama and Ohio deadlines are almost certainly unconstitutional. Early deadlines for candidates to be added to the general election ballot have been held unconstitutional in 30 states during the period 1968 through the present. Anderson v Celebrezze, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down Ohio’s independent presidential petition deadline, says courts should adjudicate challenges to deadlines with a balancing test. Applying such a test to the Alabama and Ohio certification deadlines shows that the harm to the states of striking down those deadlines is almost nonexistent, yet the harm done to voting rights by those two deadlines is immense.