What happens next? A timeline of the process between voting and inauguration

My fellow Americans, we have reached the other side. Months of debate, campaign ads, unsolicited text messages, canvassers at the door, and a news cycle that did not want to stop have all led us to this: the day after Election Day. 

While our role as voters has been taken care of, the election process certainly isn’t over. We thought we’d take this opportunity to walk you through what happens next, from the moment the last vote was cast to Inauguration Day on Jan. 20, 2025—no conspiracy theories, no unfounded claims, no interference, just the safe, peaceful process as it was designed to work and has for generations. 

The Official Canvass

Canvass: The official process of carefully checking and counting all the votes after people have finished voting, to make sure every valid vote is included in the final results. It’s like double-checking the math in a contest to make sure the final results are correct before announcing the winner.

You may have watched breathlessly last night as counties around the country reported their respective tallies and states were called in favor of one candidate or another based on those counts. But those were the unofficial counts.

Once the polls close, election workers—everyday folks like you and me who have been trained to help ensure our democracy keeps on working—must total up the number of ballots cast at their specific polling location, including in-person voting, early voting, or mail-in ballots. 

Their task is to make sure that the number of votes cast at that location matches up with the number of people who voted there.

Whether cast on paper or using an electronic machine, those ballots are then sent to a central election office to be verified. Mail-in ballots can take longer to verify, as the signature on each one needs to be corroborated by an election official. 

Different states have different laws around when mail-in ballots can be counted, with Pennsylvania expected to take the longest due to a rule that prohibits officials from even processing the ballots (removing them from envelopes and corroborating signatures) until Election Day. 

Other swing states like Wisconsin, Georgia, and North Carolina have similar rules and could see delays, while workers in Arizona, Michigan, and Nevada are able to begin counting mail-in ballots before Election Day. 

The Post-Election Audit

Most states require a “post-election audit”—another step to ensure all votes have been counted accurately. Election officials check a sample of ballots against machine-counted results to confirm that the machines counted votes accurately. (This kind of testing is done before Election Day, too.)

Post-election audits are conducted by bipartisan teams and are open to the public. 

Certification

Certification: When election officials sign documents declaring that the vote count is complete and accurate. It’s like putting an official seal of approval on the results, confirming they’re true.

Certification is a mandatory safety mechanism that confirms every vote has been counted and the results of the races on the ballot have been determined. It first happens locally, where a local official or body must certify the results as tallied by the aforementioned election workers. 

Then, those locally certified results are sent to the state level, where an official such as the governor or secretary of state certifies again that they have been accurately counted. 

When it’s a presidential election, those results must be finalized in time for the statewide meeting of presidential electors who will represent the state in the Electoral College. 

The Electoral College

Every state has electoral votes. The number of electoral votes your state has is equal to the number of people your state sends to Congress—one for each member in the House of Representatives, and one for each Senator. For example, Iowa has six, Georgia has 16, and Texas has 40 electoral votes. There are 538 total electoral votes in the Electoral College. The candidate who wins at least 270 electoral votes will win the presidency. 

The political parties in each state are tasked with choosing a “slate of electors.” That’s a group of people who will represent their political party in casting the state’s electoral votes. 

Even though you vote for the name of a candidate on your ballot, you’re actually voting for the slate of electors from that candidate’s political party. On Election Day, if a majority of people in your state voted for, say, the Democratic candidate—in other words, the Democratic candidate “wins” your state—that means your state’s Democratic slate of electors will get to cast your state’s electoral votes. 

Each state’s designated person—usually the governor—must certify the chosen slate of electors by Dec. 11. 

Then, on Dec. 17, the electors from each state will meet in their respective Capitol buildings to cast their votes for president and vice president. They will record those votes on certificates that they sign and send to the US Senate, to be received by the President of the Senate no later than Dec. 25. 

The Joint Congress (aka January 6)

On or before Jan. 3, 2025, as the newly elected Congress assembles, the US archivist—the country’s keeper of records—will carry out a technical review of each state’s certificates, and will then send them on to Congress.  

On Jan. 6, 2025, a meeting of the Joint Congress—which means the new Senate and new House members coming together under one roof—counts each state’s electoral votes and, finally, finalizes the election of the president and vice president. 

Challenges and ‘Tie-Breaker’ Rules

If any objections to the electoral votes are made, they must be submitted in writing and be signed by at least one-fifth of the members of the House and one-fifth of the Senate. If objections are presented, the House and Senate withdraw to their respective chambers to consider the merits of the objection(s). 

According to the National Archives, only two grounds for objection are acceptable: that the electors of a state were not “lawfully certified” or that the vote of one or more electors has not been “regularly given.” What does that mean?

According to the CATO Institute, “These are terms of art intended to reflect a specific set of (generally unlikely) problems: that the electors whose votes have been submitted are not actually the persons who were appointed by the state as its members of the Electoral College, or that their votes violate any of the handful of explicit constitutional provisions governing how the electors are to vote and for whom they may vote.” 

What If No One Wins 270?

If no presidential candidate wins at least 270 electoral votes, under the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, the House of Representatives will decide the presidential election by majority vote. Choosing from among the three candidates who received the greatest number of electoral votes, each state would be given one vote.

The Peaceful Transition of Power

Since 1789, when George Washington became the nation’s first president, every president has been sworn in at an inauguration ceremony recognizing the leadership of their administration. That ceremony includes passing the “power of the people” from one president to the next. That’s the power referenced in the phrase “the peaceful transition of power.”

On Jan. 20, 2025, the president-elect and vice president-elect will take the Oath of Office and become the President of the United States and Vice President of the United States, respectively. President Joe Biden will pass the torch—and in four years, we’ll do it all over again. 

What Happened in 2020?

You might remember that former President Donald Trump came up with a plan in early December 2020—one month after losing the election to Joe Biden—to try to use “fake electors” in seven states. At the time, Donald Trump was still President of the United States. He, Rudy Giuliani, members of Trump’s administration and campaign, and members of the Republican Party in seven states set the plan in motion to override the vote of the American people. 

Groups of fake electors, which the Trump campaign called “alternate slates,” were assembled in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. They gathered in secret at the same time as the true electors did to cast each state’s electoral votes for president and vice president. The fake electors signed a forged certificate that certified Trump and Mike Pence as the winners in those states. They then sent their certificate to the National Archives and to Congress. Though the National Archives did not accept their documents, the plan remained to pass them along to then-Vice President Mike Pence.

That’s because the Vice President of the United States serves as the President of the Senate. And the Constitution says that the President of the Senate is the person who must open the certificates from the states during the Joint Congress.

In the days leading up to Jan. 6, 2021, Pence repeatedly told Trump that he did not believe he had the authority to overrule the vote of the American people. Meanwhile, Trump was encouraging his followers to gather at the Capitol to stop the presidential election from being finalized for Biden.

The January 6 attack on the US Capitol began as Congress started the electoral vote count. Six people died, at least 174 police officers were attacked, property from the US Capitol was stolen, and more than $30 million in damage was done on the US Capitol building—all in an attempt to prevent the Joint Congress from counting the Electoral College votes.