WASHINGTON — The Democratic Party plans to move forward with a virtual call for delegates to its convention to choose a presidential nominee before meeting in person next month in Chicago, with Vice President Kamala Harris Now that President Joe Biden has given up his re-election campaign, he is in high demand.
The Congressional Rules Committee meets Wednesday to approve how the virtual nominee list will work, but on Monday The Associated Press obtained a draft of the plan it must approve.
The proposal does not specify a date for when the virtual convocation will begin, but Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison said the process will be completed by Aug. 7.
“We can and will be both swift and fair in pursuing this nomination,” Harrison said during a conference call with reporters.
The party says the virtual roll call could include multiple rounds of voting on nominees. To qualify, candidates must have the electronic signatures of 300 congressional delegates.
The Democratic National Convention opens in Chicago on August 19. The state delegations at the rally began expressing near-unanimous support for Harris in the hours after Biden announced Sunday that he was abandoning his re-election bid.
Biden endorsed Harris shortly after he announced he would suspend his campaign.
That doesn’t formally make her the party’s nominee, but the vice president spent hours on Sunday calling more than 100 party leaders, members of Congress, labor leaders and leaders of advocacy and civil rights groups to say she deserved the nomination on her own merits and to make sure they would support her.
Since then, Harris has won the support of hundreds of Democratic lawmakers, leading governors and some of the country’s most powerful unions, as well as the congressional delegations from Florida and North and South Carolina.
Biden’s exit from the race and his support for Harris ended weeks of questions about whether he was up to the demands of a campaign and a second term in the wake of his dismal debate performance against Republican Donald Trump late last month.
Democrats first announced in May that they would resort to a virtual roll call to meet a deadline in Ohio and ensure Biden’s name would appear on the ballot in that state.
Ohio lawmakers have since repealed the previous deadline, but the DNC said that because the change doesn’t take effect until Sept. 1, the party still must choose a nominee by the original deadline or risk legal trouble.
In 2020, the in-person Democratic convention was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic and states turned to a virtual process to formally nominate BidenWhen they meet in Chicago next month, Democrats will still hold a statewide name call that is a regular part of nominating conventions, though it would be largely ceremonial.