D.N.C. Will Proceed With Biden Nomination, but Delays First Steps

Democrats will nominate President Biden for re-election in a virtual roll call, but will delay setting a date for the delegate vote until next week and will not begin it until August, members of the party convention’s rules committee were told in a letter on Wednesday.

The decision to push back setting the date means Mr. Biden’s nomination will not be formalized before the end of July, though the letter makes clear that the party intends to have it completed by Aug. 7 in order to avoid any risk of a legal challenge to placing Mr. Biden on the ballot in Ohio.

The letter, from the co-chairs of the party convention’s rules committee, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota and Leah Daughtry, a longtime Democratic Party official, says that no virtual voting will begin before Aug. 1.

Mr. Walz, appearing on Wednesday at a news conference in Milwaukee on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention, said the timing of the Democratic convention required a virtual nomination before delegates gather next month in Chicago. The process for the nomination, he said, is not being rushed.

“We just need to get it done,” he said.

How precisely the process will work is expected to be determined during the rules committee’s meeting on Friday.

“On Friday, we will propose a framework for how best to proceed,” Mr. Walz and Ms. Daughtry wrote in the letter, a copy of which was reviewed by The New York Times. “Next week, we will follow up with a second meeting to consider and adopt specific rules for that purpose.”

“No matter what may be reported, our goal is not to fast-track,” they say. “Our goals are to uphold our tradition of transparency, our commitment to an effective nominating process that delivers a nominee on all state ballots, and ultimately to set our nominees on a path to victory in November.”

The announcement comes two days after a small group of House Democrats opposed to a swift nomination of Mr. Biden began circulating a letter that aimed to delay the process until the party’s national convention, which begins Aug. 19. Representative Jared Huffman of California and others have argued that Ohio’s Aug. 7 deadline does not present a legal risk and should be ignored.

The Democratic Party has plunged into infighting over whether Mr. Biden should be the nominee since his weak debate performance against former President Donald J. Trump late last month. Since then, 20 congressional Democrats have called for Mr. Biden to end his campaign and allow for a replacement nominee to be chosen. He has repeatedly said he will remain in the race.

There is no mechanism for the party to remove Mr. Biden as its nominee if he does not choose to drop out. The vast majority of the more than 4,600 delegates to the party convention are bound to vote for Mr. Biden on the first ballot, regardless of when that vote takes place.