Democratic Party leaders announced Tuesday that despite fears that flaws in Ohio's laws could prevent Biden from contesting the state's election in November, they would avoid a delegate vote in the state and nominate Biden for a second presidential term through a virtual delegate roll call at the party's national convention.
Ohio law requires all candidates to be legally certified by Aug. 7, but Biden wasn't scheduled to be officially nominated until after the Democratic National Convention begins on Aug. 19. The virtual roll call is expected to be completed before Ohio's deadline.
Republicans took action as the Ohio Legislature convened for the first time in two decades to pass legislation to resolve voting issues at the state level. Lawmakers had no trouble addressing similar issues surrounding presidential candidates in 2012 and 2016, but deep divisions within the GOP had stalled action for weeks.
Gov. Mike DeWine, also a Republican, has grown frustrated, calling lawmakers into special session last week and calling it “absurd” and “unreasonable” that they couldn't end the legislative gridlock.
Just last week, Ohio House Speaker Rep. Jason Stevens spoke candidly about the inability to quickly resolve Biden's voting problems.
“There's just no will in Congress to do that,” he told reporters Wednesday. “This is a politically charged time. Some Republicans don't want to vote.”
Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison issued a statement on Tuesday blaming Republican lawmakers for their inaction. “Joe Biden will be on the ballot in Ohio and all 50 states, and Ohio Republicans agree,” Harrison said. “But when it came time to act, they failed to act every time, and now Democrats are going to land the plane on their own.”
Early roll calls are not a new solution: Democrats also held Biden's nomination vote remotely in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic.
The fact that Ohio's special session was even necessary highlighted the dysfunction and partisan rancor of the party's supermajorities in both houses of Congress.
The Ohio Legislature faced similar discrepancies in 2012 and 2020, approving one-time exceptions to the Aug. 7 deadline to accommodate party convention schedules. The Alabama Legislature faced similar technical issues this year, and unanimously enacted its own amendment on May 3.
But the Ohio Republican Party left the state Capitol earlier this month without taking action on the voting issue, despite Ohio's Republican Attorney General Frank LaRose warning about the issue on April 5.
Deep divisions between hard-line and moderate Republicans in the Ohio House of Representatives, as well as political feuds between Republicans in the House and Senate, have roiled the state Legislature for more than a year.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported in January that Congress approved just 16 bills for the 2023 session, including bills to designate Nov. 19 as James A. Garfield Day in honor of the Ohio-born 20th president and to designate July as Sarcoma Awareness Month. The total was the lowest since at least the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s, the newspaper said.