Democrats Fighting Over ‘Virtual Roll Call’ To Nominate Joe Biden Before Convention

The Democratic National Committee should drop its plan to nominate President Joe Biden for reelection before the Democratic Party’s convention next month, Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) said Wednesday, as the DNC said the early nomination plan wouldn’t move as quickly as some Democrats feared.

“Fast-forwarding the nomination process is no way to convince the many unconvinced voters in the growing number of battleground states,” Doggett said in a press release.

Doggett is one of several House Democrats worried that the DNC’s plan to nominate Biden via “virtual roll call” before the convention is an effort to cut off debate over the president’s fitness for the job.

The DNC first formulated the plan in May over concerns that Biden wouldn’t appear on ballots in Ohio due to a state law requiring parties to set their nominees 90 days before the November general election. That meant Democrats would need to nominate Biden by Aug. 7, before their convention starts Aug. 19.

But Ohio lawmakers have since changed the law, leading some Democrats to question the virtual roll call plan amid concerns that Biden might not be the best candidate to face Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

“To try to squelch debate and jam this through is a power play of the highest order,” Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) told The New York Times on Monday.

Huffman and Doggett have been gathering signatures from their colleagues on a letter asking the DNC to drop its virtual roll call plan altogether, which they warned could begin as soon as this weekend.

On Wednesday morning, Leah Daughtry and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), the co-chairs of the DNC’s rules committee, said in a letter to members of their committee that no voting would take place before August ― but they were adamant that it had to happen to keep Biden on the ballot in Ohio and other states.

“We know that the Republican Party and its affiliated groups, like Project 2025 author The Heritage Foundation, plan on filing all conceivable legal challenges to the Democratic Party’s nominees,” Daughtry and Walz wrote. “Having enough time to finalize our nominees and make sure they are on ballots around the country is critical. That is the driving reason for conducting a virtual voting process.”

Election law experts are skeptical that Republicans could actually kick Biden off the ballot.

“There’s no indication this would happen politically, and if it did it seems just about certain that if Ohio tried to do so a court would order Biden’s name on the ballot,” Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote Tuesday on the Election Law Blog. “This instead seems to be a political move to rush Biden’s nomination through amidst calls from some Democrats to replace him on the ticket.”

Doggett was the first of nearly two dozen Democrats in Congress who have called on Biden to step aside since his bad debate performance against Trump last month.

“Short-circuiting the normal Convention process jeopardizes the White House, Senate and House,” Doggett said Wednesday. “With his gang controlling all branches of government, America is at serious risk of a totally-unleashed Trump. After accomplishing so much for our country, this should not be the legacy for which Joe Biden is remembered.”