The unusual filing by Vice President Kamala Harris appears to be an attempt to take over the campaign of former Democratic 2024 election leader President Joe Biden. In another twist, the unprecedented move caused the FEC to take notice two presidential candidate named “Kamala Harris.”
whoops?
The incident exploded into the public eye after Harris submitted the Statement of Candidacy, the Federal Election Commission’s document qualifying candidates to run for any federal office except for the position of vice president must submit.
The document, known as Form 2 by the FEC, is one that candidates must submit within 15 days of entering the election. Candidates are then assigned a unique ID that follows them for life.
Despite being a senator at the time, Biden was given the number, P80000722, which stuck with his presidential campaign. The FEC used it to track him from his 1988 White House shooting to his resignation in 2024.
Harris’ number, P00009423, was assigned when he entered the 2020 election as one of the Democratic candidates.
Lawyer and activist Laura Powell noticed the unusual behavior and reported the findings in a July 25 post on the X social media platform.
“On Sunday, July 21st, Kamala Harris announced she was not running for Vice President and is now running for President,” Powell wrote. “Accordingly, he filed a Statement of Candidacy.
“However, instead of using her own identification number, she put Joe Biden’s identification number on the form. Or, to look at it another way, Kamala Harris altered Joe Biden’s Candidate Statement to change his name to her name, signing her own name on the form.
The fight for Harris may be due to the fact that more than $ 90 million was then sitting in the chest of the Biden-Harris war, the princely amount that he had the first claim.
Three days after the filing, the conservative group Citizens United and Republican party officials from 16 states filed complaints with the FEC about Harris’ attempts to take over Biden’s position in the campaign before the candidate’s announcement.
“Here, the FEC accepted the Form 2 as belonging to Kamala Harris — even though it was Joe Biden’s identification number, not Kamala Harris’s,” Powell wrote. “Remember, the identification number of the candidate remains with the individual for life. If Joe Biden, in theory, will be President again, he will use the same identification number, which is currently used by Kamala Harris.
“There is no precedent for two candidates sharing candidate identification numbers.”
Powell noted the unusual filing raises some serious issues with how the FEC presents the data.
According to him, after Harris submitted a Form 2 using the president’s ID, “the FEC website basically deleted Biden’s records,” and the records associated with the identification number even listed Harris’s name. Problems with the election agency’s database continued as Tim Walz entered the campaign.
“The current 2023-2024 FEC record for ‘Biden for President’ (aka ‘Harris for President,’ ID number C00703975) is tied to two Presidential candidates,” Powell posted on August 7. “Both are named ‘Kamala Harris.’ One of the candidates is associated with Harris candidate ID number (P00009423), and the other ‘Kamala Harris’ is associated with Biden candidate ID number (P80000722).
It seems that the FEC recognition of two candidates named Kamala Harris has finally been rectified or removed from public view.
As of Thursday, the hiccups in the FEC’s list of candidates appeared largely absent, although on Biden’s page, the raw electronic file of Harris’ most recent Form 2 was listed.
As far as I can tell, FEC changes the way the file appears on the website, so it doesn’t look weird. Yesterday, there were two separate pages for a Presidential candidate with the name Kamala Harris—one with Biden’s ID number and one with Harris. Today, Harris… pic.twitter.com/SzYKJalLjM
— Laura Powell (@LauraPowellEsq) August 8, 2024
The Democrats’ shuffling of Biden to the curb is suspicious enough, but a shady file with the FEC sheds new light on the possibility that Kamala Harris will ascend to the party’s ticket.
This article first appeared in The Western Journal.
