Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Explanation: What happens between Election Day and Inauguration Day?
Explanation: What happens between Election Day and Inauguration Day?
Feb 11, 2026 8:12 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
Acton Line podcast: What is woke capitalism? Daniel J. Mahoney on ‘The Idol of Our Age’
From Gillette to Pepsi, panies are starting to market their products by advocating for social justice issues, signaling to consumers that they are “woke.” Is ‘woke capitalism’ a trend that’s truly new in the market? Is there a place for businesses ment on social issues? Acton’s president and co-founder, Rev. Robert Sirico, explains. Afterwards, Daniel J. Mahoney, professor of political science at Assumption College speaks about his newest book, “The Idol of our Age: How the Religion of Humanity Subverts...
Missionary malpractice in Uganda? A reflection on ‘good intentions’
In the routine stories of humanitarian activism gone wrong, we find ready reminders of the limits of good intentions. In each case—whether among governments or non-profits and religious institutions—we see how a heartfelt motivation to “do good” can easily serve as a blind spot on hearts and minds. One of the latest examples involves Renee Bach, an American missionary who, at age 20, moved to Uganda and soon started a charity for malnourished children. Now, Bach is under fire for...
Drucker on the ‘master organization’ and the totalitarian conceit
This is the fourth in a series of essayson Peter Drucker’s early works. It was sometimes said of fascists that they “made the trains run on time.” In The End of Economic Man, Peter Drucker saw that fascists “proved” their fitness through effective organization. Technical details substituted for real social ends. But the real power of fascist organization has to do with its ambition prehensiveness. In effect, the fascist state holds up the political party and insists that all be...
A ‘one-stop shop’ for natural law theory
Over at the University Bookman, W. Bradford Littlejohn reviews Niels Hemmingsen’s On the Law of Nature: A Demonstrative Method, recently published by CLP Academic. Littlejohn describes this surprising sixteenth century treatise as “a concise one-stop shop summary of Aristotelian-Thomistic epistemology, philosophy of action, and natural law theory.” The work, written by a Danish Lutheran theologian, challenges the received historical narratives about Protestant and Roman Catholic ethics: Thanks to the painstaking translation labors of Hillsdale classicist E.J. Hutchinson, Niels Hemmingsen has...
Be fruitful, multiply, and grow the economy
In one of the most memorable mid-1990s episodes of The Simpsons, the curmudgeonly misanthrope Charles Montgomery Burns achieves a lifelong dream: Since the beginning of time, man has yearned to destroy the sun. I shall do the next best thing: block it out. While Mr. Burns had no use for our nearest star, the other residents Springfield were dismayed by the citywide sun-block. They understood, as Steve Martin once said, that “A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.”...
The magic of the washing machine
What was the greatest invention of the industrial revolution? The late great Hans Rosling makes the case for the washing machine. Rosling explains how the productivity gains of the washing machine (and similar labor-saving devices) lead to increases in education and economic growth in the developing world. ...
How God makes a pencil
In 1958, Leonard Read published his brilliant essay, “I, Pencil.” The Competitive Enterprise Institute recently released a wonderful video that illustrates Read’s point that the creation of a pencil requires an unfathomable level plexity and undirected cooperation. Read’s original essay was written from the point of view of the pencil and the humble writing implement explains why it is as much a creation of God as a tree. Since only God can make a tree, I insist that only God...
The ‘King of Israel’: The Caesar strategy or cultural renewal?
President Donald Trump ignited a national debate when he shared ment referring to him by the messianic title of the “King of Israel.” Whatever this says about President Trump, it unintentionally revealed a great deal about Western mitment to salvation by politics, and it brought to the surface a long-simmering question we must answer: Will we pursue cultural renewal through the sustained preaching and incarnation of the Gospel, or will we turn to a secular ruler for deliverance? The evidence,...
The reason America’s poor are richer than most Europeans
The U.S. has diverged from the OECD approach to economic and energy issues that critics called this weekend’s G7 Summit the “G6-plus-one.” However, a new study shows America’s less regulated, less regimented economy has generated such abundance that the poorest 20 percent of Americans are more prosperous than the average European. “If the U.S. ‘poor’ were a nation, it would be one of the world’s richest,” writes Jim Agresti of Just Facts in a new article for the Acton Institute’s...
Edmund Burke believed in trade liberalization
Whenever the conservative movement loses its way, says Samuel Gregg in an article for Law & Liberty, it’s only a matter of time before some turn for guidance to the figure most associated with modern Anglo-American conservatism’s emergence—Edmund Burke. And Burke admirers who have reservations about market economies should remember, says Gregg, that Burke robustly defends what we would call “market liberalism.” Burke’s status as a conservative icon often draws attention away from that portion of his political career spent...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved