Forget the Media Driven Drama, Guess Whose Vote Will Nominate Obama?

Posted by Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet at 1:06 PM on August 27, 2008.

Hillary Clinton will cast the vote by the New York delegation that will put Barack Obama over the threshold needed to become the Democratic Party's 2008 presidential nominee, according to party staffers working at the podium.

The delegates have been asked to be in their seats at 3 PM, local time, to start the official nominating process a half hour later. That means the actual voting by state delegations will probably begin somewhere around 4 PM, convention staffers said.

The convention chair will ask various states for their votes, but before the total reaches the 2,117 delegates needed to secure the nomination, the chair will call on the New York delegation, where the state's junior Senator, Hillary Clinton, will announce to the hall how her state is voting -- delivering the nomination to Obama, party staffers said.

The move will be an emotional finale to Clinton's historic presidential campaign. Former president Bill Clinton is scheduled to address the convention later tonight.

Tagged as: hillary, obama, dnc

Steven Rosenfeld is a senior fellow at Alternet.org and co-author of What Happened in Ohio: A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the 2004 Election, with Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman (The New Press, 2006).