Here’s what will happen between Election Day and Inauguration Day
The people have spoken. Now what?
Normally, what happens between Election Day and Inauguration Day is a series of formalities to which few people need to pay attention. But President Donald Trump’s refusal to acknowledge that he lost to Presidentelect Joe Biden, and top Republicans’ acquiescence to his efforts to subvert the democratic process, have made the arcane procedures by which the will of the people is formalized a matter of public importance.
First, let’s address the elephant in the room: It is extremely unlikely that Republicans will be able to overturn the results of the election.
It is possible, yes, to come up with scenarios in which legislators or judges engineer a second Trump term and plunge the nation into a constitutional crisis. But even with a conservative Supreme Court, a Republican- led Senate and Republican- led congressional delegations in most states, election law experts are confident this won’t happen.
Here’s an overview of what will happen between now and January.
States certift results
County or municipal officials — whichever level of government is responsible for election administration in a given state — must count all the ballots, double- check the totals and make sure every valid vote was included. The exact procedures vary by state.
Those officials report their final tallies to the state, whose chief election official — often, but not always, the secretary of state — compiles the results and submits them to the governor. States set their own deadlines for this; a few have done it, and the last deadline is California’s on Dec. 11.
The governors must send Congress a “certificate of ascertainment” with their states’ certified vote totals and the names of their electors before Dec. 14, when the Electoral College will convene. But there is a strong incentive to do it earlier because results certified by Dec. 8, known as the safe harbor deadline, are largely insulated from challenges.
State legislators could intervene
A primary tactic of the Trump campaign and conservative groups has been to use lawsuits and other maneuvers to try to prevent states from certifying their results, or at least delay the process.
The idea is, in part, that if election officials can’t certify Biden’s victories in time, Republicancontrolled state legislatures could step in and name pro- Trump electors.
In Georgia, Trump called for a time- consuming hand recount, which could stretch past the certification deadline. Biden’s
14,000- vote lead is an extraordinary hurdle for any recount to overcome, and he doesn’t need Georgia’s electoral votes to win anyway.
Even if the counts were certified on time, state legislators could still, in theory, go rogue and appoint pro- Trump electoral slates to compete with the slates certified by governors. But it probably wouldn’t survive legal scrutiny.
Electoral College meets
On Dec. 14, each state’s electors will cast their votes formally. Most states have laws requiring electors to vote for the candidate they were pledged to ( in almost all cases, the winner of their state’s popular vote), limiting the possibility of “faithless electors.”
One possible — but, again, exceedingly unlikely — complication would be if a state legislature somehow managed to appoint a pro- Trump slate and defend it against legal challenges,
but the governor certified a pro- Biden slate through the normal process, producing two competing sets of electors.
In that case, it would be up to Congress to decide which slate to count.
Congress will certift results
On Jan. 6, Congress will count and certify the electoral votes.
Aiden will be sworn in
The coming weeks may be chaotic.
They may undermine public faith in the electoral process and cement Trump supporters’ false belief that the election was “stolen.”
The damage to democratic institutions may be long- lasting.
But in the short term, it is virtually inconceivable that anything will happen but this: On Jan. 20, Biden will raise his right hand, take the oath of office and become the 46th president of the United States.