politics
WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris has received enough votes from Democratic delegates to develop into the party's presidential candidate, Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison said Friday.
Although the web voting process doesn’t end until Monday, the decisive moment for the campaign was when it crossed the hurdle to acquire a majority of the delegates' votes.
Harris is more likely to be the primary woman of color to go a serious party’s candidate list.
“I am honored to be the presumptive Democratic nominee,” Harris said in a phone call along with her supporters.
Harrison said: “We will rally around Vice President Kamala Harris and demonstrate the strength of our party” through the party's convention in Chicago later this month.
Democrats have pushed ahead with a virtual vote to nominate Harris, nearing the climax of a tumultuous process that was upended by President Joe Biden's decision not to hunt re-election.
Delegates to the Democratic National Convention began voting by secure email on Thursday, and voting will remain open through Monday evening. Harris has not yet chosen her vice presidential running mate and is predicted to conduct interviews with candidates over the weekend.
Formal nominations are expected to be accomplished by August 7, regardless that the party's convention in Chicago will not be scheduled to start for greater than two weeks. Democratic officials have said the accelerated timeline is mandatory due to August 7 deadline to make sure candidates appear on Ohio's ballot.
Harris was endorsed by Biden shortly after he dropped out of the race, catapulting her to the forefront of the campaign to beat Republican nominee Donald Trump. No other major candidate competed with Harris for the nomination, and she or he was the one selection for delegates under party rules, which required pledges of support from at the very least 300 delegates, with not more than 50 signatures needed from any delegation.
Any delegate wishing to vote for somebody apart from Harris will probably be counted as “present.”
Democrats still plan to carry a state-by-state vote through the convention, the standard technique to select a candidate, but due to online voting, it should be purely ceremonial.
The party insists that its candidate should be decided before the beginning of its convention in Chicago on August 19 to be certain that Ohio's voting deadlines are met – an argument that the state's Republicans dispute.
Ohio state lawmakers have since modified the deadline, however the change is not going to take effect until September 1. Lawyers for the Democrats warn that waiting until after the unique deadline to decide on a presidential candidate could lead on to legal challenges.
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