The Democratic National Committee plans to hold a "virtual roll call" to nominate before the party's August convention — a tactic meant to spare Biden the of being left off Ohio's general election ballot.
Biden's campaign and DNC announced the move Tuesday as the state Legislature here opened a to resolve the issue.
The Democratic convention — where the party traditionally nominates its candidates for president and vice president — is scheduled after Ohio's Aug. 7 deadline for certifying candidates. Ohio GOP lawmakers, who hold supermajorities in the state House and Senate, have been reluctant to pass a bill relaxing that deadline for Biden without a vote on unrelated campaign finance legislation that Democrats have described as a "poison pill."
Democrats "will land this plane on our own," DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison said in a statement. "Through a virtual roll call, we will ensure that Republicans can't chip away at our democracy through incompetence or partisan tricks and that Ohioans can exercise their right to vote for the presidential candidate of their choice."
The DNC's rules and bylaws committee is expected to vote June 4 on a resolution to allow for the virtual roll call. DNC members will vote on the resolution in the following weeks and, once adopted, a virtual nomination process can proceed. Party officials are likening the approach to the virtual convention held in 2020 during the pandemic.
The Biden campaign and DNC had for weeks resisted going forward with such plans. Ohio's certification deadlines have come before both parties' nominating conventions in the past, and in those instances, both parties resolved the issue cleanly, without rancor.
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But in calling for the special session, DeWine requested that lawmakers tackle both a Biden ballot fix and a measure to ban foreign money in state ballot issue campaigns. The latter measure had been attached to a previous state Senate version of the Biden-related bill, but the state House never voted on it, triggering the scramble and DeWine's call for a special session.
"Once again, Republican politicians at the statehouse are playing politics with our democracy by trying to prevent Ohio voters from choosing who they want to be president, but Democrats will not trade Ohioans' ability to hold their government accountable for presidential ballot access," Liz Walters, the Ohio Democratic Party chair, said in a statement.
Nickie Antonio, the Democratic leader in the Ohio Senate, announced the change in strategy at a news conference Tuesday.
"The first thing we've done is we have asked the Biden campaign to issue a statement, which they will do today, assuring the people in the state of Ohio that Joe Biden will be on the ballot because they are going to go in an alternative direction to find a solution that does not include the Ohio Legislature," Antonio said.
