If anyone is going to challenge Vice President Kamala Harris for the Democratic presidential nomination, they have only until this weekend to do it.
Delegates to the Democratic National Convention rules committee approved the virtual roll call on Wednesday, moving ahead with a July 30 deadline for candidates seeking to collect delegate signatures to appear on the virtual roll call. The virtual roll call, which must be completed by Aug. 7 to comply with Ohio ballot access deadlines, could start as early as next Thursday.
The compressed timeline — nominating Harris less than two weeks after President Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race — nearly guarantees the vice president’s path to the nomination, given the wide swath of support she’s picked up from Democrats across the country since declaring her candidacy on Sunday. She also benefits from the DNC pushing ahead on a virtual roll call that would conclude by Aug. 7, which the committee has defended as necessary to avoid potential legal challenges by Republicans in Ohio.
According to the adopted rules, candidates must declare their intent to run with the DNC by Saturday at 6 p.m. Eastern time. After they’ve filed the requisite forms, they must collect at least 300 delegate signatures, no more than 50 of whom can come from the same state, by Tuesday.
The DNC is also still advising that it’s important for “both nominees” for president and vice president to appear on the virtual roll call, which could push Harris to announce her running mate by the middle of next week.
“Failure to certify both nominees in advance of each state’s ballot access deadline opens us up to very real political and litigation risk, both before and after the election,” said Pat Moore, who is the DNC’s legal counsel. “Republicans will use this moment to do what they do: to sue, to try to bar us from the ballot, or to try to disqualify our voters.”
But the DNC has also said that it plans to give the Democratic presidential nominee “discretion” to name their running mate on their own timeline.
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