US presidency: Why so long from election to inauguration?

The 2024 US presidential election took place on November 5, but the winner isn't sworn into office until Inauguration Day on January 20, 2025.

What is the purpose of this 11-week wait? France, for example, inaugurates its president just 10 days after its election. In the UK, the winner of the general election is inaugurated the next day. 

Former four-month period

For more than a century, the US did not inaugurate its president until March, potentially leaving an administration that was voted out in charge for another four months. That changed in 1933, with the ratification of the 20th amendment to the US Constitution, during the height of the Great Depression economic crisis. It moved Inauguration Day from March 4 to January 20.

At the time, the country was experiencing 25% unemployment, the highest in recorded US history. Freshly elected Franklin D. Roosevelt was waiting to enter office while incumbent Herbert Hoover was "all but out of the White House," wrote Matt Dallek, a historian and professor of political management at George Washington University in the US, in an email to DW.

The move was made "to limit the chances of chaos, instability and a leaderless government," he said. 

Certification of election results

The process of US presidential election to inauguration is complex because, as Erik Engstrom, a professor of political science at the University of California, Davis, wrote in an email to DW, the "election machinery of the US is very decentralized."

After the polls close on Election Day, votes are tallied by poll workers in thousands of individual voting districts across the country. These results are generally reported to a statewide database on election night. This is how the country learns who is projected to have won the race. 

But although these early initial results almost always reflect a clear winner, they are still considered unofficial and uncertified. 

After election night, the certification process begins in the individual states.This involves tasks such as examining ballots that were rejected by voting machines, counting ballots that arrived after the official election — from US citizens living abroad, for example — and handling any conflicts related to the counting of the votes within the state or its municipalities. 

The 2000 election between Al Gore and former US President George Bush offers an example of one of these disputes. The Gore campaign asked for a recount of the votes in Florida. After multiple court cases at the state level, the Supreme Court ruled against the request on December 9, 2000. 

Electoral votes

After any disputes are settled and results are counted, they are sent to the state government to be certified by the governor.

Unlike most other countries, US presidents are not elected by a majority population vote, but by electors from the US Electoral College.

When people vote in the US presidential election, they are not actually voting for the president but rather for the candidate's electors. 

To use the example of Missouri, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump vied for 10 electors in the state. The media have already announced that Trump won the majority of the state's vote, so he wins all 10 electors. A candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win an election.

So, when the governor certifies the results, they are actually certifying the slate of electors. 

These electors meet to cast the state’s official electoral votes in mid-December. Their answers are sent to Congress. 

Congressional vote count

Congress meets on January 6 to count the electoral votes they have received from the 50 US states. The US Vice President presides and announces the winner. In 2021, Donald Trump had falsely claimed that the 2020 election was "stolen" from him, which riled up far-right Trump supporters enough to storm the US Capitol on January 6 to try to stop the vote count. Joe Biden was announced as the rightful winner later that day.

Over the course of the following two weeks until Inauguration Day, which takes place on January 20, the incoming US President will announce their cabinet. This includes their picks for Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense and Attorney General, for example. 

In the rare case there is a tie and both candidates receive 269 Electoral College votes, or neither receives the required 270, the House of Representatives (the lower chamber of US Congress) is tasked with deciding the winner. 

'A historical artifact'

The November-to-January timeline from election to inauguration outlined in the US Constitution also had a logistical component.

It "is somewhat of a historical artifact," Michael Berkman, a professor of political science at Pennsylvania State University in the US, told DW. 

"[It] took a long time to come to New York for the inauguration from the original 13 states," he said, referring to the 13 colonies that existed when the US Constitution was founded in 1789. 

Travel time to the US center of government, at that time located in New York City, played a big role in how the entire government and its processes were designed, he explained.