Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Explanation: What happens between Election Day and Inauguration Day?
Explanation: What happens between Election Day and Inauguration Day?
Nov 5, 2026 5:15 AM

The peaceful transition of power from one chief executive to another is one of the most enduring and cherished legacies of the American government. But it’s also plicated process. There is a lot that has to happened in the 75 days between Election Day and Inauguration Day.

Here is a brief outline of some of the steps that have to be taken in the transition from President Obama to President Trump.

November 9

Presidential campaigns usually create a transition team during the summer before the election. But starting today the president-elect is authorized by The Presidential Transition Act of 1963 to received funding to pay for his staff, secure office space, and pay for other expenses. (The President’s FY2016 budget request included $13.278 million in funding for the transition.)

Around this time, the transition team will create agency review teams, which as the Center for Presidential Transition explain, are responsible for “collecting information about the unique roles and responsibilities of each major department and agency of the federal government, and providing information that is relevant, useful and important to the new administration.”

The transition team also has to select the top 50 Cabinet appointees and key White House personnel,develop a policy implementation plan, budget and management agenda, send intended Cabinet agency appointments to the Senate, and figure out how to fill roughly 4,000 politically appointed positions (including more than 1,000 jobs requiring Senate confirmation).

They will also begin to draft new executive orders so that they can be implemented as soon as the president-elect takes office, and work with Office of Management and Budget (OMB) career staff to develop a “shadow” presidential budget aligned with the president-elect’s top policy priorities.

Mid-November through December 19, 2016

Before the president-elect can take office, the Electoral College has to actually elect the president. The first step is for the governor of each state to prepare seven Certificates of Ascertainment, which lists the names of the Electors chosen by the voters and the number of votes received and the names of all other candidates for Elector and the number of votes received.

These documents are to be prepared “as soon as practicable” after the election results in each state are certified. pleted, the governor sends one of the Certificates of Ascertainment to the Archivist at the National Archives and Records Administration.

December 13, 2016

Any final decisions about the appointment of their electors must be resolved by this day (six days before the meeting of the Electors). This is so the electoral votes of each state will be presumed valid when presented to Congress.

December 19, 2016

The Electors meet in their state and vote for President and Vice President on separate ballots. The electors then record their votes on six “Certificates of Vote,” which are paired with the six remaining Certificates of Ascertainment that were issued by the governor and a copy sent to various officials (the President of the Senate (the Vice President) the presiding judge in the district where the Electors met, etc.).

December 28, 2016

Electoral votes (the Certificates of Vote) must be received by the President of the Senate and the Archivist by today (no later than nine days after the meeting of the electors).

January 6, 2017

The Congress meets in joint session to count the electoral votes. The Vice President, as President of the Senate, presides over the count and announces the results of the Electoral College vote. The President of the Senate, Joe Biden, then declares that Donald Trump and Mike Pence have been elected President and Vice President of the United States.

Mid-January

The transition team will be submit agency review reports and brief ing agency heads, prepare a Cabinet orientation/retreat, and take care of other last minute items. President-elect Trump willalso likely get a tour of his new home and office from President Obama.

January 20, 2017 at Noon—Inauguration Day

The President-elect takes the Oath of Office and es the President of the United States.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Returning to the real economy
In the April 24 edition of the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi focuses on the origins and lessons of the global financial crisis. In a previous article, Gotti Tedeschi argued that the downturn is an opportunity for Italy to reform its economy and cut down on unnecessary public spending. He now examines what the crisis means for the state of international finance and draws some unusual but noteworthy conclusions. In his view, the principal answer for improving global...
Toward a theological ethic for internet discourse
The relationship of the Christian church and the broader culture has been a perennial question whose genesis antedates the life of the early Church. In his Apology, the church father Tertullian defended Christians as citizens of the Roman empire in the truest and best sense. If all the Christians of the empire were to leave, he wrote, “you would be horror-struck at the solitude in which you would find yourselves, at such an all-prevailing silence, and that stupor as of...
Catholic NGOs miss the boat on the food crisis
The recent dramatic rise of food prices reflects the worst agricultural crisis of the last 30 years, especially for developing countries whose citizens inevitably spend a larger portion of their es for basic needs. The list of countries facing social unrest as a result is long and growing: Cameroon, Egypt, Niger, Somalia, Ethiopia, Mauritania, Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Haiti, Indonesia, Mexico, Argentina, and the Philippines. Consequences of these price increases are also affecting the United States, where rice is beginning to...
Global Warming COOLING Consensus alert: The ice age cometh?
Submitted for your consideration: THE scariest photo I have seen on the internet is , where you will find a real-time image of the sun from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, located in deep space at the equilibrium point between solar and terrestrial gravity. What is scary about the picture is that there is only one tiny sunspot. Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming, the average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined...
Straight talk on trade
My reaction to any politician claiming to offer “straight talk” is a knowing chuckle (“yeah, right”), and that includes John McCain. So I’ve got to give credit to the so-called Straight Talk Express for a recent campaign stop in Youngstown, Ohio, where the Republican presidential candidate offered some honest and ments on a contentious subject in politically risky circumstances—straight talk, if you will. The subject was trade, and McCain defended it in a region suffering from the real or perceived...
Fundraising and the fungibility phenomenon
A fight broke out this week between non-profit groups over fundraising. While not in petition for donor dollars, the U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance expressed its displeasure with Meijer, Inc. for participating in a fundraising event with the Humane Society of the United States. The program was set up to contribute money to a support Foreclosure Pets Fund, designed to give support to pet owners facing foreclosure. Meijer suspended the program after plaints from the Alliance that the chain was cooperating with...
An advertising stimulus
One sector of the American public that hasn’t missed out on the government’s purpose for the economic stimulus package is the advertising and marketing industry. Savvy marketers are targeting sales and special offers to the federal rebate checks, which start to go out today. One sector of the economy especially banking on how people will spend their stimulus rebates is the automobile industry. Here, for instance, is a local car dealer’s ad specifically targeted to the stimulus package: I’ve seen...
The slippery slope of Catholic ecology
: What I have found odd is that so many Catholics, especially female religious, should gravitate toward what appears to be essentially pantheism or what some eco-spirituality thinkers prefer to call “panentheism” (the universe as the “body of God”) when the Church has addressed the entire ecology question in a way that would, practically speaking, lead to the same results in terms of respect for the created order and sustainability. Indeed. Given the present direction ofCatholic movement on climate change,...
Methodist liberals attack hospitality of renewal groups
United Methodist renewal groups are under attack by liberal denominational leaders at General Conference for providing the gift of free cell phones for some international delegates who made the trip to Forth Worth, Texas. Opponents of the the evangelical renewal groups are afraid that the phones will be utilized to tell certain international delegates how to vote. A letter from the renewal groups supposedly included with the gift invited them to a breakfast, provided other General Conference news, and a...
Utopia!
Continuing with my posts highlighting just how wonderful things will be here in the United States when the government finally does its job and takes over the healthcare sector of the economy, I’d like to bring your attention once again to the fabulous success story that is the Canadian health care system: Last year, the Canadian government issued a series of reports to address the outcry over long wait times for critical tests, procedures and surgeries. Over a two year...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved