Donald Trump is expected to return to the White House after defeating Kamala Harris in the 2024 US presidential election. However, he will not be sworn in until Inauguration Day, January 20, 2025.

What is the purpose of these 11 weeks of waiting? France, for example, invests its president just ten days after his election. In the United Kingdom, the winner of the general election is chosen the following day.

Former four month period

For more than a century, the United States did not inaugurate its president until March, potentially leaving an administration in power that had been rejected for another four months. That changed in 1933, with the ratification of the 20th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, at the height of the economic crisis of the Great Depression. Inauguration Day was moved from March 4 to January 20.

At the time, the country was experiencing an unemployment rate of 25%, the highest unemployment rate in U.S. history. Newly elected Franklin D. Roosevelt was waiting to take office while outgoing President Herbert Hoover was “almost out of the White House,” wrote Matt Dallek, a historian and professor of political management at George Washington University in the United States. -United, in an email to DW. .

This decision was taken “to limit the risks of chaos, instability and a leaderless government,” he explained.

Certification of election results

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

After polls close on Election Day, votes are counted by poll workers in thousands of voting precincts across the country. These results are typically entered into a statewide database on election night. This is how the country finds out who supposedly won the race.

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

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

The 2000 election between Al Gore and former US President George Bush provides an example of one such dispute. The Gore campaign has requested a recount of the votes in Florida. After several state-level trials, the Supreme Court ruled against the request on December 9, 2000.

Electoral votes

Once the disputes are resolved and the results are tallied, they are sent to the state government to be certified by the governor.

Unlike most other countries, American presidents are not elected by a majority vote of the population but by the voters of the American 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 return to the example of Missouri, Harris and Trump were competing for 10 electoral votes in this state. The media has already reported that Trump won most of the state’s votes, that is, he won all 10 electors. A candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win an election.

So when the governor certifies the results, he is actually certifying the list of voters.

These voters meet to officially vote in mid-December. Their responses are sent to Congress.

Congressional vote count

Congress meets on January 6 to count the electoral votes it received from all 50 U.S. states. The American vice president presides and announces the winner. In 2021, Donald Trump falsely claimed that the 2020 election was “stolen” from him, which angered far-right Trump supporters enough to storm the U.S. Capitol on January 6 in an attempt to stop the counting of votes. Joe Biden was announced as the legitimate winner later that day.

Over the next two weeks, leading up to Inauguration Day, which will take place on January 20, the new US president will announce his cabinet. This includes, for example, their choices for secretary of state, secretary of defense and attorney general.

In the rare case where there is a tie and both candidates receive 269 votes in the Electoral College, or if neither obtains the required 270 votes, the House of Representatives (the lower house of the U.S. Congress) is responsible for deciding the winner.

“A historical artifact”

The November to January schedule between the election and inauguration, provided for in the US Constitution, also had a logistical element.

It’s “somewhat of a historical artifact,” Michael Berkman, a professor of political science at Pennsylvania State University in the United States, told DW.

“(It) took a long time to come to New York for the inauguration of the original 13 states,” he said, referring to the 13 colonies that existed when the U.S. Constitution was founded in 1789.

The travel time to the center of the U.S. government, located at the time in New York, played a significant role in the design of the entire government and its processes, he explained.

This article was originally published on November 6 and updated to reflect Donald Trump’s election victory.

Edited by: Carla Bleiker