Republicans nominate Trump at in-person roll call, after DNC went virtual - CNET

President Donald Trump and the Republicans on Monday kicked off the party's national nominating convention, an event that arrives a week after Democrats pulled off a mostly virtual gathering and avoided technological glitches that could have come with the untested format.

The Republican National Convention, which opened up with the party formally nominating Trump as its candidate, is set to be a mixture of live and taped events that leans on in-person participation more heavily than the Democrats did. The GOP is conducting the "official business" of the convention live from its host city, Charlotte, North Carolina. By contrast, only a small number of the Democrats' events included more than a few people in a room.

The biggest difference between the RNC and DNC so far has been the roll call, the cornerstone of political conventions, in which delegates from each of the nation's states and territories vote for the party's nominee. In normal times, it's a raucous affair with arenas packed full of cheering people wearing star-spangled accessories and trinkets.  

In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, Republicans on Monday held a traditional, if scaled down, version of the roll call. The committee sent six delegates from the 57 US states and territories to vote in person in Charlotte, for a total of 336 people. The delegates, who were tested for COVID-19 when they arrived in the city, practiced social distancing and received temperature checks. One by one they cast their state's votes, standing in front of a white backdrop with the hashtag #RNC2020 printed on it. Trump addressed the convention on site after clinching the nomination. 

Later Monday, the committee aired speeches by former US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley and the president's son Donald Trump, Jr., from Washington, DC, avoiding technical hiccups during its primetime broadcast.

In contrast to the GOP's nomination vote, Democrats last week fashioned a virtual version of the roll call, with remote footage from each state and territory. Alabama Rep. Terri Sewell cast her state's votes from the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the site of an iconic civil rights march in 1965. A masked Rhode Island chef posed on the beach with a plate of calamari, instantly becoming a meme. The format yielded mostly favorable reviews, using the procedural election as a way to showcase America's diversity and natural beauty. 

The different approaches underscore the unique challenges of the moment. Nothing about 2020 is normal, and the conventions are just the latest example of our new bizarro lives. Court cases are conducted online. School is held remotely. Baseball is played without fans in the stands. The Democrats and Republicans moving to unconventional formats is more evidence of how our world is intermediated by the internet, particularly during a pandemic that has already killed more than 175,000 Americans.