The Democratic National Committee will welcome New Hampshire’s delegates to the national nominating convention this summer in Chicago after the state party conducted a very small party-run presidential primary this weekend.

An official vote bringing New Hampshire Democrats back into the fold is expected to take place on Tuesday, at the next meeting of the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, which oversees the party’s nominating calendar.

Granite State Democrats faced losing their state’s delegates to the August national convention following January’s Democratic presidential primary, which ignored a new DNC presidential nominating calendar passed a year earlier that upended New Hampshire’s century-long tradition of holding the first primary in the race for the White House.

Sources told the Monitor that dozens voted Saturday in a “firehouse” primary held by the New Hampshire Democratic Party, which took place at Saint Anselm College’s New Hampshire Institute of Politics. The party-run primary was first reported by Politico.

The quiet primary brought New Hampshire into compliance with DNC rules.

“We congratulate NHDP on running a successful primary this weekend that ensures the delegate selection process is compliant with (Rules and Bylaws Committee) rules and allows the voices of Democratic voters in New Hampshire an opportunity to be represented at the convention in August,” the DNC said in a statement.

“Our delegate selection process is complete and our delegates will be seated at the convention,” longtime state party chair Ray Buckley said in a statement. “We’re committed to re-electing President Biden.”

Democrats for years knocked both Iowa (whose caucuses for half a century kicked off the nominating calendar) and New Hampshire as unrepresentative of the party as a whole because the states have largely White populations with few major urban areas. Nevada and South Carolina were added to the Democrat calendar nearly two decades ago to increase the diversity of the early states’ electorate and had until recently, voted third and fourth on the calendar.

While Republicans didn’t make major changes to their 2024 schedule, the DNC followed Biden’s lead early last year and overwhelmingly approved a calendar that moved South Carolina to the lead-off position and bumped New Hampshire to second, along with Nevada.

But New Hampshire, adhering to a state law that mandates its presidential primary goes first, did just that – which meant the state’s Jan. 23 nominating contest was unsanctioned by the national Democratic party.

The president kept his name off the ballot and steered clear of the state, but thanks to a well-organized write-in effort by New Hampshire’s Democratic establishment leaders, the president easily won the primary over his long-shot challengers.

With the primary in the rear-view mirror, Biden returned to New Hampshire in March for his first visit in nearly two years.

“It stunned me, the write-in campaign you all did,” Biden told supporters at a campaign stop in Manchester. “I was stunned and I was really pleased.”

And Biden said to laughter, “I was very careful not to be here.”

While New Hampshire Democrats technically faced severe sanctions for holding the unsanctioned January primary, an agreement with national party leaders to restore the delegates to the convention was expected.

Longtime Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, a top Democrat in the U.S. House and a close ally of Biden’s, on the night of his state’s first-in-the-nation presidential primary, urged the DNC “not to hold the state law in New Hampshire against our Democrats.”

“Let those Democratic delegates up in New Hampshire have their vote at the convention,” Clyburn emphasized, as he stood on a podium next to DNC chair Jaime Harrison.