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An election result may have finally been called for for Joe Biden, but with more than two months for the president-elect to be officially sworn in, the electoral process has only just begun.
The delay in announcing a winner for the 2020 election was primarily due to the unprecedented abundance of mailed and absentee votes cast as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
But while the vote count took longer than usual this year, it still met the parameters set by federal law, which only requires all votes to be tabulated in mid-December.
This is done to ensure that all vote counting is completed in time for the next phase of the electoral process: the electoral college meeting.
The voters’ meeting is traditionally held on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December. This year it falls on December 14.
Voters will meet in their respective states and cast their votes for president and vice president on separate ballots.
The next step comes on January 6, when these votes are counted in a joint session of Congress.
Vice President Mike Pence, as President of the Senate, will preside over the count before announcing the results of the vote.
The electoral process will finally conclude on January 20, when Mr. Biden takes the oath of office and is officially sworn in as President of the United States.
What about the transfer of power?
US law lays out clear instructions for an orderly transfer of power from one president to another, but Joe Biden’s path is expected to be more difficult than that of most of his modern predecessors.
A legal fight by President Donald Trump that sparks vote counts in multiple US states could delay many vital transition-related activities, as happened in 2000, when George W Bush wasn’t declared the winner until five weeks after the election. .
“A long legal battle would delay the transition, and that could be dangerous on the foreign policy front,” said a source in the Republican Congress. “The world is not standing still while we are all focused on the elections.”
Given that Democrat Biden won enough electoral votes to claim the presidency, there are concerns that groundbreaking Trump could limit cooperation and make the typically serious process a messy affair.
On Saturday, after major television networks called for Biden’s election, Trump accused his rival of “rushing to pose as the winner,” but did not provide evidence of anything inappropriate.
Foreign diplomats and other observers are bracing for possible abrupt political moves by the Republican president between now and the day of inauguration of January 20 that could undermine the incoming administration when it will have to quickly deal with the coronavirus pandemic and the concurrent economic crisis.
The Presidential Transitional Law, first passed in 1964, gives career officials significant power over the transfer of data and expertise to incoming officials, an agreement intended to limit the risk of politicization.
It is unclear whether Trump, who has refused to admit defeat, will abide by historic protocol and meet personally with his successor, as President Barack Obama did with Trump shortly after the 2016 election.
The transition process cannot accelerate until the government’s General Services Administration (GSA) certifies the winner, and said Saturday it had not yet made a determination. Until then, the GSA may continue to provide Biden’s team with offices, computers, and background checks for security clearances, but they are not yet allowed into federal agencies.
Planning the new administration
Biden’s transition website, buildbackbetter.com, went live on Wednesday and even after his win statements, there was only one page and no explanation of the plans.
Jordan Strauss, a former White House official and now managing director of business intelligence at Kroll, a division of financial consultancy Duff & Phelps, said about 200 people from Biden had been working for months to come up with plans for the new administration.
Biden is expected to deploy hundreds of representatives to dozens of agencies in the coming weeks to lay the groundwork for him to replace more than 4,000 Trump political appointees, the core of a federal bureaucracy that controls an annual budget of more than $ 4.5 trillion. .
Transition teams
Serving officials have leeway on how useful they want to be, people involved in past transitions said.
In 2016, then-President Obama directed his staff to “go professional” and cooperate with Trump’s team. But the turnover of Trump’s transition staff and the reluctance to accept materials prepared by Obama’s aides marred the effort, said multiple sources involved in the process.
Political scientist Martha Joynt Kumar, author of a 2015 book on White House transitions, was optimistic about the process’s resilience this time. Trump officials have so far adhered to rules like facilitating security clearances, Kumar said.
Chris Liddell, a White House deputy chief of staff and others involved in the transition, take his reputation seriously, he said, and a peaceful transfer of power remains a central tenet of the American system.
“To what extent are people going to want to participate at the end of the administration in the explosion of relationships and institutions?” Kumar asked.
Biden’s team is led by Ted Kaufman, a longtime adviser appointed to complete his term in the Senate after he was elected Obama’s vice president in 2008.
However, the legal framework cannot prevent possible acrimony among transition teams or prevent Trump from issuing executive orders and rules that Biden could oppose.
Kate Shaw and Michael Herz, law professors at Yeshiva University in New York, said the involvement of career officials should limit the damage, but briefings on the transfer of intelligence and security data are overseen by the intelligence director. national, John Ratcliffe, a Trump. loyalist.
Shaw and Herz wrote in an essay in The Atlantic: “A lot could go wrong before noon on January 20.”
Additional Reuters reports
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