9 Dates That Matter After Election Day

ABOUTOnce the polls close on November 5, the path to swearing in Kamala Harris or Donald Trump will still take several more weeks. There is a detailed process to ensure that ballots are counted accurately and that state and federal officials properly determine who has the most Electoral College votes.

Here are the key dates that matter after this Election Day:

November 7: State certification of results begins.

Once votes are counted, state election officials must certify the accuracy of the results.

The deadlines for states to certify official vote counts have been staggered. Delaware is in first place and has until Nov. 7 to certify its votes, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. Key battleground state Georgia must certify its results by Nov. 23, followed by Michigan on Nov. 25 and North Carolina and Nevada on Nov. 26. In Wisconsin, the deadline to certify the Electoral College results is December 1, and in Arizona it is December 2. Pennsylvania and Rhode Island do not have specific certification deadlines.

Most states operate on a winner-take-all basis. This means that the state’s popular vote determines who all voters in the state will ultimately support. (In Nebraska and Maine, some electors may be divided and are determined by popular vote in each congressional district.)

The candidate with the state’s 270 electoral votes—the majority of the 538 electors in the Electoral College—will be named president. But before that happens, several more steps must be taken, including the governors formally appointing electors for the winning candidate.

November 11: Briefings on the presidential transition are due to begin.

If there is no clear winner by Nov. 11, federal agencies will have to begin briefing the Harris and Trump campaign teams separately about each agency’s most pressing work and key roles that need to be filled.

When then-President Trump refused to acknowledge Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory, he disrupted the typical process of orderly presidential succession. Biden’s team has been denied access to briefings from critical federal agencies such as the Pentagon, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security. To better prepare a new president to replace a recalcitrant president, Republicans and Democrats in Congress passed the Electoral Counting Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act in 2022. Previously, the General Services Administration would figure out which candidate was likely to win before the transition briefings began. But the two campaigns will now begin planning separately for a transition period if neither candidate concedes within five days of Election Day.

November 26: Trump sentenced in hush-money case

As the official election results machine works, it is possible that Donald Trump will have to appear in a Lower Manhattan courtroom for sentencing in his New York City hush money case. In May, a jury found Trump guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records to hide payments he made to a porn star to buy her silence ahead of the 2016 election.

New York State Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan will sentence Trump. A sentencing hearing had previously been scheduled for Sept. 18, but Trump’s lawyers argued that sentencing so close to the election could unfairly impact the outcome of the race. The sentence carries a possible prison term of up to 4 years. But given that Trump has never been convicted of a crime before, he could receive a lighter sentence or probation. There is nothing to prevent a convicted felon or a person in prison from serving as President of the United States. If Trump becomes president, he will not be able to pardon his New York convictions because the president has no power over state charges.

December 11: Confirmation

Once states have certified their results, each state’s executive branch—in most cases the governor—signs “certificates of certification,” officially allocating that state’s electors to the winning candidate. These are pieces of paper that Congress considers as a result. December 11 is the deadline for the certificates to be signed by the governors of each state.

The individuals named on this piece of paper will be the electors expected to cast the state’s Electoral College votes. The signed certificates will be attached to the state’s official electoral votes, and copies will be sent to Congress and the Archivist of the United States.

A candidate can challenge these certifications in court, but they can only be changed through an expedited judicial review process that is part of the election reforms passed by Congress in 2022.

December 17: Electoral votes.

In each state, electors meet and vote for president and vice president. In each election cycle, this occurs on the first Tuesday after the second Wednesday in December. In 2024, this falls on December 17th.

The electoral votes are recorded and sealed with certificates signed by the governor, and the entire package is sent to Congress and the National Archives.

December 25: Electoral votes arrive in Washington, DC.

Many of the existing procedures for formally establishing the results of the country’s presidential elections were developed when important documents were transmitted across the country by horseback, rather than by plane or email. The same applies to the deadline by which official electoral votes must arrive at state capitals. They must arrive in Washington by the fourth Wednesday in December, which falls on Christmas Day this year.

If electoral votes are not received by Dec. 25, the Senate President or Archivist may request an additional copy held by the state’s top elections official.

January 3, 2025: House and Senate meet.

Every two years, the newly elected House of Representatives and Senate meet at noon on January 3. If the Senate President has not yet received a set of election certificates, copies can be requested from the archivist.

For the House of Representatives, the first priority is to elect a speaker. If Republicans hold the House, Speaker Mike Johnson will likely keep the gavel. Democrats are likely to back House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries for speaker if they take control of the chamber.

January 6, 2025: Electoral votes counted

The sitting vice president—as president of the Senate—has the ceremonial duty to oversee the final stage of the Electoral College process at 1 p.m. on January 6, 2025, during the joint session of the House and Senate. Whether she wins the election or not, that role will be filled by Vice President Harris, who will preside over the ceremony while the certificates of election for each state are counted and tallied and the winner is declared.

After Trump pressured Vice President Mike Pence to try to overturn his 2020 election defeat on January 6, 2021, Congress clarified that the vice president’s role in the process was to perform “solely ministerial duties” and he has no power to reject electoral votes.

January 20, 2025: Inauguration Day

Around noon on January 20, 2025, the President-elect will take the oath of office on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. When Trump was the outgoing president in 2021, he did not attend Biden’s inauguration. This time, Biden intends to attend the ceremony no matter who wins. “This president believes in a peaceful transition of power, and that’s what you will see this president do,” spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said.