Vice President Kamala Harris has won enough delegate votes to secure the Democratic presidential nomination, Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison announced Friday, though the results are not yet official.
The DNC will not make an official announcement of results until Monday evening, when the virtual voting process closes for delegates to next month’s Democratic National Convention.
“I will officially accept your nomination next week, once the virtual voting process is closed, but I’m happy to know we have enough delegates to secure the nomination,” Harris said on call with supporters organized by her campaign, where Harrison made the announcement.
Harris would be the first Black woman and first Indian American in American history to secure a major party’s presidential nomination.
Democratic delegates are holding an unusual pre-convention virtual vote in order to finalize their nomination before a ballot access deadline in Ohio next week, which was set before the party’s national convention kicks off in Chicago on Aug. 19. They had been planning to formally select their presidential candidate that way since May, long before Biden withdrew his re-election bid.
Harris is running unopposed for the Democratic nomination after President Joe Biden dropped his re-election bid and endorsed her last month. Democrats threw together a new lightning-fast nomination process that allowed other candidates to compete, but no major Democrats threw their hats in the ring and the unknown candidates who submitted nomination papers failed to secure enough support to qualify for the internal ballot.
Virtual voting for the roughly 4,700 delegates to the convention began Thursday morning and is not scheduled to conclude until 6 p.m. ET on Monday. Harris’ campaign says she received more than the 2,350 votes needed to secure the nomination a little over day into the process. Delegates cannot change their votes once cast.
Delegates will hold a “ceremonial and confirmatory” roll vote in-person at the convention, according to the party’s newly adopted rules, but the nomination will be made official once the virtual voting ends next week.
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