During a few spare minutes on Thursday, Colorado Sen. John Hickenlooper walked a few blocks away from his Capitol office to cast his vote to officially settle the Democratic presidential nomination process.
“I have the online official ballot for the Democratic National Convention, 2024. As a delegate, I'm casting my vote online for Kamala D. Harris to be the next president of the United States,” he said as he hit the button to send his ballot “to the official delegate counter in the sky.”
Voting in the virtual roll call opened Aug. 1. Hickenlooper is one of 87 Democrats from Colorado who will help select the party’s nominee for president.
This process is a necessity for the party so that the Democratic candidate can meet Ohio's deadline to appear on the state ballot, which is before the actual Democratic National Convention later this month.
It was also pretty straightforward. There were only two options on the ballot: Harris or Present.
“There’s been so much change in the last few weeks,” Hickenlooper said, referencing President Joe Biden’s decision not to run for reelection, “that being a delegate has evolved and we now have a 100 day sprint to make sure the country actually knows who Kamala Harris is.”
In the end, it was also a little anticlimactic: just clicks on a keyboard, unlike the raucous state-by-state roll call that happens on the convention floor where someone gets to talk up their state before casting their votes for the nominee.
“It’s a little disappointing,” Hickenlooper admitted, but he added it won’t take away from the energy at the convention once it starts, which will still include a ceremonial roll call vote.
“The ceremony will come later, then the party will be in November,” he said.
The virtual roll call is open until Monday, 6 p.m. ET, but the Harris for President campaign announced Friday that she had received enough support from delegates to make her the presumptive Democratic nominee.
