Harris to be sole Democratic presidential candidate heading into official party vote

WASHINGTON — Deputy Director Kamala Harris is the only White House candidate who has qualified to run for the Democratic presidential nomination, the Democratic National Committee said in a statement Tuesday.

While no other major Democrat had indicated plans to challenge Harris, the DNC’s announcement officially clears the way for the vice president to seek her party’s nomination unopposed, just nine days after her former running mate, President Joe Biden, fallen out of the race and created a vacancy at the top of the ticket.

Harris will now face a vote by the party’s national convention delegates, who will officially endorse the nominee in a new online voting process adopted by the party last week. Voting begins Thursday and ends Aug. 5, the press release said. Votes for anyone other than Harris will be counted as “present.” According to a Associated Press SurveyHarris was the overwhelming choice of delegates at the party convention to replace Biden as the party’s standard-bearer and take on former Republican President Donald Trump in November.

Under party rules, a candidate can run for the nomination by filing a notarized statement of candidacy, meeting the legal requirements to run for president, and obtaining the electronic signatures of at least 300 delegates, with a maximum of 50 signatures per delegation.

Despite the early voting to select a nominee, delegates will still gather as planned in late August at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The party will hold a ceremonial state-by-state roll call on the convention floor, followed by acceptance speeches from Harris and her soon-to-be-named running mate.

The press release states that automatic delegates, also known as superdelegates, will be allowed to vote on the first ballot, as the delegates overwhelmingly voted for Harris.