Democrats plan to nominate Biden virtually to avoid missing Ohio voting deadline

COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Democratic National Committee plans to hold a “virtual call” to nominate President Joe Biden before the party’s convention in August — a tactic intended to spare Biden the growing danger of being left out of Ohio’s general election.

The Biden campaign and the DNC announced the measure Tuesday as the state Legislature opened a special session ordered by Republican Gov. Mike DeWine to resolve the issue.

The Democratic convention — where the party traditionally nominates its candidates for president and vice president — is scheduled for after Ohio’s Aug. 7 deadline for candidate certification. 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 voting on unrelated campaign finance legislation that Democrats have described as a “ poison pill.”

Democrats “will land this plane on their own,” DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison said in a statement. “Through a virtual call, we will ensure that Republicans cannot destroy our democracy through incompetence or partisan trickery 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 on June 4 on a resolution to allow virtual roll call voting. DNC members will vote on the resolution in the coming weeks, and once adopted, a virtual nomination process can proceed. Party officials are comparing the approach to the virtual convention held in 2020 during the pandemic.

The Biden campaign and the DNC resisted moving forward with such plans for weeks. Ohio certification deadlines have come before both parties’ nominating conventions in the past, and in those cases both parties have resolved the issue cleanly, without rancor.

But in calling the special session, DeWine requested that lawmakers address both a Biden election fix and a measure to ban foreign money in state election campaigns. The latter measure was attached to an earlier state Senate version of the Biden-related bill, but the state House never voted on it, triggering the confusion and DeWine’s call into a special session.

“Once again, Republican politicians in the House are playing politics with our democracy, trying to stop Ohio voters from choosing who they want to be president, but Democrats will not compromise Ohioans’ ability to hold their government accountable for access to the presidential vote,” Liz Walters, chairwoman of the Ohio Democratic Party, said in a statement.

Nickie Antonio, Democratic leader of the Ohio Senate, announced the change in strategy at a press conference on Tuesday.

“The first thing we did was ask the Biden campaign to issue a statement, which they will do today, assuring the people of the state of Ohio that Joe Biden will be on the ballot because they will go in an alternative direction to find a solution that does not include the Ohio Legislature,” Antonio said.