I looked at the schedule at http://www.demconvention.com/ , but it seems to be entirely about the speakers, music acts, etc.
When does the actual VOTING take place? Or did it already, and I missed it? (No, I haven’t been watching any TV coverage.)
I looked at the schedule at http://www.demconvention.com/ , but it seems to be entirely about the speakers, music acts, etc.
When does the actual VOTING take place? Or did it already, and I missed it? (No, I haven’t been watching any TV coverage.)
You missed it. Yesterday, the voting started, then Hillary said “let’s stop this, and just say that Barack is the nominee.” Everyone cheered. End of voting.
Actually, the voting had all been done previously. That was just a roll-call announcement by each state of the results of their votes.
The delegates from each state met sometime yesterday, before then, cast their votes, and counted them to get the totals that would be announced in that roll call. Some may have actually done it on the floor just before the roll call, but most states did it earlier.
In my state, they had been discussing it among themselves for several days as to how they would vote. It was all a matter of being nice to each other, and trying not to hurt anyones’ feelings. Some delegates were close personal friends of the Clintons, and really wanted to vote for her. Some felt strongly that all the way through the whole process they had promised others that they would vote for Clinton at the Convention*, and felt they had to make good on that promise. Meanwhile, some of the Obama delegates felt that anything less than 100% voting for Obama would be spiteful and damaging to party unity. So a lot of inter-personal negotiation went on before they decided on the final vote count. (A lot of that negotiation happened at those parties, musical events, late-night bar visits, etc. that you mentioned) But in the end they came to an acceptable agreement.
*Officially, the rules required all our delegates to vote for their pledged candidate on at least the first ballot. (Which would have given Hillary Clinton about 4 times as many votes as she got.) But because the result was decided long ago, nobody is going to enforce those rules. Had it been a close vote, they might have mattered.