WASHINGTON (AP) — Once again: with feeling!
It’s been nearly two weeks since Vice President Kamala Harris officially won the Democratic presidential nomination in an online vote. It was the first time a candidate had been announced before the convention. Yet the roughly 4,700 delegates tasked with selecting the nominee did so from locations around the world, on their laptops and devices, and in relative isolation from one another. There was none of the pomp and fanfare that usually accompanies the election of the party’s leader. In other words, it wasn’t very entertaining.
Democratic leaders hope to make amends with a ceremonial vote at the Democratic National Convention, which begins Monday in Chicago. Key agenda items will essentially include a re-enactment of the official presidential election held in early August, resembling the sometimes celebratory, sometimes raucous roll call votes that have been a staple of in-person conventions for nearly 200 years.
The Democratic National Committee called the event a “celebratory roll call” and said in a statement that the event would give delegates the opportunity to “celebrate the nomination” of Harris. Harris is the first woman of color to lead a major party’s presidential nomination.
And this is how it works:
Delegates will gather at the convention on Tuesday to cast their symbolic votes. It is the third consecutive Democratic convention where roll calls have taken place on a Tuesday and the first in-person roll call since 2016. For decades, Democrats held their roll calls on a Wednesday, the penultimate day of the convention.
It has been more than 40 years since there was no question about who the candidate would be in a roll call vote at the party convention. Since then, each party has always had a single candidate emerge as the likely nominee long before the convention, making the vote itself a foregone conclusion.
This is especially true for the 2024 Democratic Convention, as the ceremonial vote is non-binding and cannot reverse or change the outcome of the earlier, official vote to nominate Harris, which took place over five days in the first week of August. That’s not to say there can’t be some attempt or another to stage a protest vote from the convention, but that won’t affect the outcome.
The result of the official nomination vote in early August was 4,563 votes for Harris and 52 for “present,” the only other option on the ballot. Another 79 delegates did not vote.
Convention organizers have indicated that the ceremonial vote will follow the general format of in-person roll calls of previous conventions, with some stylistic flourishes. State delegations will continue to call their votes from the convention in a session presided over by the convention secretary. These presentations are typically an opportunity for each delegation to express its support for the candidate and party, while demonstrating its pride in the state. This year, each presentation will be accompanied by a song representing the delegation, similar to a star batter’s “walk-up” song at a baseball game. A DJ will play the song on the main stage while iconic images from each state and territory are shown on large screens.
The party secretary will ask state delegations to vote mostly in alphabetical order, with some key exceptions. Voting in the ceremonial roll call will begin with President Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware in tribute to the president. Roll calls will end with vice presidential nominee Tim Walz’s home state of Minnesota and Harris’ home state of California. Organizers say the changed order symbolizes the passing of the torch from Biden to Harris and the “next generation of Democratic leadership.”
Changing the order in which delegations cast their votes is a common tool used by both parties to choreograph roll calls to give certain states a more prominent role in the process.
In previous roll call votes at both parties’ conventions, voting was temporarily halted once the candidate exceeded the number of votes needed for the nomination so delegates could mark the occasion with a celebration on the floor. Eventually, voting continued until all delegations had voted. Convention organizers did not specify how or if delegates would symbolically mark Harris’ milestone as a nomination. That distinction is no longer relevant this year, as Harris is already the nominee according to the official vote in early August.
According to a statement from the party’s chair, delegates will symbolically vote for Harris and Walz during the ceremonial roll call, a departure from traditional roll calls.
Typically, the vice presidential nominee is officially elected by the delegates in a separate process, often on a different day of the convention. Vice presidential nominees of both parties are usually elected by acclamation, or by a vote of the entire party delegation, not by a separate roll call vote. This separate process is usually a formality, since the identity of the prospective vice presidential nominee is often known long before the convention begins.
This year, Walz won the vice presidential nomination in early August. After she was named the presidential nominee, Harris officially nominated Walz as her running mate, and the party chair declared Walz the nominee, according to party rules. The same process was used to nominate Harris as the vice presidential nominee at the 2020 convention.
Harris and Walz were named the Democratic presidential and vice presidential nominees on August 6. However, both will accept their nominations symbolically in speeches to the full convention. Harris will speak on Thursday, in keeping with the tradition of both parties that the nominee speaks on the final night of the convention.
Walz will speak on Wednesday night. For decades, the Democratic vice presidential nominee delivered his speech at the convention on the final night, right before the presidential nominee. That practice ended in 1996, and since then the vice presidential nominee’s speech has always been delivered on Wednesday night, with the exception of 2012, when it was delivered on Thursday.
At the 2020 convention, then-candidate Joe Biden won the nomination after delegates cast their votes virtually in a series of elaborate live video presentations from every state and U.S. territory – a process created in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The unique and sometimes quirky nature of remote presentations quickly became a convention favorite. This year, convention planners said in a statement Sunday that the ceremonial roll call will again include some live video elements to “showcase the diversity and beauty of America.”
DNC officials first hinted in May that they would hold a virtual roll call before the convention to remove a potential obstacle to Ohio’s acceptance of the Democratic nominee. Ohio’s general election registration deadline was Aug. 7. Although the deadline had been changed in previous presidential election years to accommodate both parties’ late-summer conventions, state Republicans initially planned to keep the existing deadline this year, with one Republican lawmaker calling the scheduling crunch “a Democratic problem.”
The Republican-dominated legislature finally reached an agreement for the convention at the behest of Republican Governor Mike DeWine, but the law does not take effect until August 31. Because Ohio Republicans could still try to block the election of their candidate despite the law’s manipulation, DNC officials held their virtual roll call as originally planned.
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