WASHINGTON — Because of an Ohio ballot access issue, President Joe Biden will be nominated in a virtual roll call before the Democratic National Convention in Chicago Aug. 19-22, a move that could scramble programming for an event in which a highlight routinely has been the prime-time roll call of the states.
The need to nominate Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris early is a result of a glitch in Ohio law requiring candidates to be certified by Aug. 7.
That timetable could have meant Biden being left off the Ohio ballot. Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine called for a special state legislative session Tuesday to resolve the problem. However, Republican Ohio lawmakers have not been open to a fix unless there were strings attached.
As a result, on Tuesday Democrats out of an abundance of caution said they will sidestep the Ohio deadline by going early — and virtual.
“Joe Biden will be on the ballot in Ohio and all 50 states, and Ohio Republicans agree,” Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison said in a statement. “But when the time has come for action, they have failed to act every time, so Democrats will land this plane on our own.
“Through a virtual roll call, we will ensure that Republicans can’t chip away at our democracy through incompetence or partisan tricks,” Harrison continued, “and that Ohioans can exercise their right to vote for the presidential candidate of their choice.”
The Democratic National Committee Rules and Bylaws Committee will vote next Tuesday on “a resolution to propose changes to the call to allow for virtual party proceedings,” the Democratic National Committee stated. The Rules and Bylaws panel is chaired by Minyon Moore, who is also the chair of the Democratic National Convention Committee.
After that, the full Democratic National Committee membership is expected to rubber-stamp the virtual roll call. The date of the virtual roll call has not been announced.
“In spite of Republicans’ bad-faith efforts to stand in the way, the in-person Convention in Chicago will continue to serve as an important convening event for Democrats across the country,” the Democratic National Committee said in a statement.
Republicans meet in Milwaukee July 15-18 to nominate former President Donald Trump for the third time.
What this means for the Chicago convention’s four nights of programming — essentially a made-for-television show — is not yet known.
Biden and Harris, of course, will still be at the convention, a Democratic National Committee official confirmed. Arriving in Chicago already nominated does not preclude Biden and Harris from making acceptance speeches, or remarks from Democrats on other nights that will sound a lot like nominating speeches.
Also not yet known is whether the early roll call will be pro-forma event, or a made-for-TV slick production, much like it was in 2020.
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Democrats held what was the first all-virtual convention, with Democratic consultant Stephanie Cutter, the convention’s chief program executive, producing a roll call featuring delegates in their home states casting votes from interesting or meaningful locations. Former Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun, standing in front of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, cast the Illinois votes at that convention.
However, with the 2020 virtual convention being seen as a success, parts of the August convention in Chicago have been slated to be virtual anyway, though the programming details have not been finalized. A senior convention official said the in-person convention in Chicago will “feature the traditional seating of delegates on the floor of the United Center and in-person acceptance speeches from President Biden and Vice President Harris,” noting that in 2020, “Democrats broke new ground using technology, creativity and ingenuity to produce programming that reached historic numbers of Americans.”
The Democratic National Committee’s announcement Tuesday also means that the last live roll call Democrats held to nominate a presidential candidate was in 2016, when Hillary Rodham Clinton was nominated in Philadelphia.
Michael Madigan, at the time the Illinois Democratic Party’s chairman and now awaiting trial on criminal corruption charges, started the roll call, handing the microphone to Democratic operative Clem Balanoff to announce the Illinois tally for Sen. Bernie Sanders. The honor of casting the votes for Clinton, raised in Park Ridge, went to her lifelong friend, Betsy Ebeling, who died in 2019.
