California passed on assigning delegates to Kamala Harris during the Democratic National Convention roll call.
This is missing context. While California did initially pass, it did so because it is tradition for a candidate’s home state to assign its votes towards the end of the roll call, and it assigned 482 delegates to Ms Harris. Ms Harris had already been selected as the Democratic nominee following a virtual roll call.
A claim that California passed on assigning delegates to US Vice President Kamala Harris at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago last week is circulating online.
Multiple posts share a video showing a stadium full of people at the DNC with a person on the stage who asks: “California, how do you cast your vote?” A man standing amongst a crowd of people and by a pillar saying ‘California’ responds: “Mr Secretary the great state of California passes at this time”.
The video has been shared with captions including “She sucks so bad that California doesn’t even want her”, and “California decides not to cast their delegate votes for Kamala Harris”. Several other posts just share text saying: “BREAKING: Kamala’s Home State of California PASSES On Assigning Delegates To Her!”
But this claim is misleading and the clip is being shared without adequate context. California assigned 482 delegates to Ms Harris, who had already been formally selected as the Democratic nominee at the start of this month via a virtual ‘roll call’.
The in-person roll call at the DNC, which takes place every four years to name the party’s presidential nominee, was ceremonial, and it’s tradition for a candidate’s home state—California for Ms Harris—to cast its votes towards the end of the roll call after passing initially.
Full Fact has been checking other false claims relating to Ms Harris, including an edited image supposedly showing her with Jeffrey Epstein, and another showing her standing with her running mate, Tim Walz, in front of a communist poster.
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A convention roll call involves a representative of each US state being called upon to announce the number of delegates assigned by that state to each presidential candidate, which is effectively the number of votes won by each candidate. The candidate with the most delegates is elected as the party’s official presidential nominee.
While the roll calls typically call upon the states alphabetically, it’s tradition for candidates’ home states to vote towards the end of the roll call. Footage showing this year’s full roll call shows California initially passed but was returned to at the end, at which point Governor of California Gavin Newsom makes a short speech and announces his state’s votes.
He says: “California, we proudly cast our 482 votes for the next president, Kamala Harris.”
The home state of Mr Walz, Minnesota, also passed initially before announcing its delegates penultimately. Another exception to the otherwise alphabetical order was the first state, Alabama, which passed to the home state of President Joe Biden, Delaware, to lead the roll call, before then going second.
Roll calls from the party’s previous conventions in 2008, 2016 and 2020 are available to watch online. In 2008, former president Barack Obama’s home state of Illinois initially passed in order to cast the penultimate votes (with defeated candidate Hillary Clinton’s home state of New York casting the final votes), while in 2016 defeated candidate Senator Bernie Sanders’ home state of Vermont initially passed in order to cast the final votes. In 2020 Delaware initially passed in order to cast the final votes for President Biden.
The roll call at this year’s convention was purely ceremonial because Ms Harris had already been selected as the party’s nominee.
The Democratic National Committee opened a virtual roll call on 1 August, and she received 4,567 votes by the following day—substantially more than the majority of votes needed to formally secure the nomination.
A virtual nomination was initially planned ahead of the convention—where nominees are typically selected—because of an Ohio law that could have kept President Biden off the ballot paper had he not been nominated by 7 August, although this deadline was ultimately extended and Mr Biden withdrew from the race on 21 July. President Biden publicly endorsed Ms Harris as the presidential nominee.
Delegates are people selected by a party to represent their state or community at the party’s convention and in choosing the party’s presidential nominee. According to AP: “they tend to be party insiders, activists, or early supporters of a particular presidential candidate”. There were almost 4,700 delegates voting in this year’s DNC roll call.
Pledged delegates must vote for a particular presidential candidate based on the results of the primaries and caucuses in their state, whereas unpledged delegates can support any presidential candidate. The Republican party instead refers to bound and unbound delegates.
Following President Biden’s withdrawal, delegates pledged to him were able to vote for whoever they chose and were not automatically assigned to Ms Harris—though she ultimately contested the nomination unopposed.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as missing context because California initially passed as it is tradition for a candidate’s home state to vote towards the end of the roll call, and it did assign 482 delegates to Ms Harris. Ms Harris had also already been formally selected as nominee.
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