Bernie Sanders Nixes Roll Call Vote at DNC in Favor of Party Unity

— -- In an emotional moment, Sen. Bernie Sanders stopped the roll call vote at the Democratic Convention and pushed for his rival, Hillary Clinton, to get the nomination.

Sanders said he "move[s] that Hillary Clinton be selected as the nominee of the Democratic Party for president of the United States."

Sanders appeared on the floor of the arena tonight during the Democratic National Convention alongside the Vermont delegation to make the move.

The Vermont delegation had cast its 22 votes for Sanders, before Sanders addressed the crowd from the floor.

The move was very much a ceremonial one: Clinton had already secured the number of delegates during the roll call to clinch the party’s nomination.

Congresswoman Marcia Fudge, who is helping chair the convention, thanked Sanders for acting “in the spirit of unity to suspend the rules.”

Vermont had initially chosen to pass their alphabetical turn in order to be the last state to address the convention. That means that every other state went before them in declaring their delegate counts before Sanders moved to suspend the proceedings and ask for her to be nominated by acclimation.

Having your opponent nominate you is a procedure familiar to Clinton since she was the one to acclaim Obama as the party’s nominee when she lost to the then-Illinois Senator in 2008.

When Clinton called the acclimation vote, she did so from the floor with the New York delegation, and the roll call vote ended there. By making Vermont the last state to vote, it made sure that every state's vote was noted before nixing the roll call vote entirely.

Technically, because Sanders moved for the acclimation vote before the secretary read back Vermont’s votes, the state’s votes were not counted. As such, the final tallies come to Clinton with 2,838 votes, Sanders with 1,843 votes, and 55 abstentions. Vermont had allocated 22 of their votes to Sanders and four of their votes to Clinton.