Democrats Adopt Nomination Plan to Allow Biden on the Ohio Ballot

Democratic Party leaders said Tuesday that they would nominate President Biden for a second term in office via a virtual roll call of delegates to the party’s national convention, bypassing a glitch in Ohio law that had threatened to keep Mr. Biden off the November ballot there.

Ohio law requires all candidates to be legally certified by Aug. 7, but Mr. Biden was not scheduled to be officially nominated until after the Democratic National Convention begins on Aug. 19. The virtual roll call will be completed before the Ohio deadline.

The party acted as the Ohio Legislature was meeting in special session for the first time in two decades in an effort to pass legislation that would have resolved the ballot problem at the state level. The legislators had easily dealt with identical issues involving presidential candidates in 2012 and 2016, but deep divisions among Republicans had stalled any action for weeks.

A frustrated Gov. Mike DeWine, also a Republican, had summoned the legislators to the special session last week, calling their inability to end the legislative gridlock “ridiculous” and “absurd.”

Only last week, the speaker of the Ohio House, Representative Jason Stephens was blunt about his inability to enact a quick fix for Mr. Biden’s ballot problem.

“There’s just not the will to do that from the legislature,” he told reporters on Wednesday. “It’s a hyper-political environment at this time of year. And there are some Republicans who just didn’t want to vote on it.”

The chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Jaime Harrison, issued a statement on Tuesday denouncing the Republican lawmakers for their inaction. “Joe Biden will be on the ballot in Ohio and all 50 states, and Ohio Republicans agree,” he said. “But when the time has come for action, they have failed to act every time, so Democrats will land this plane on our own.”