President-elect of the United States

President-Elect of the United States of America
Incumbent Vacant since January 20, 2009
Style	Sir
Term length	In the period between the general election on Election Day in November and Noon (Eastern Standard Time) on Inauguration Day
Inaugural holder	George Washington January 10, 1789
Formation	No Offical Formation
Salary	None

President-elect of the United States is the title used for an incoming President of the United States in the period between the general election on Election Day in November and noon eastern standard time on Inauguration Day, January 20, during which he is not in office yet. The title is used for the apparent winner^[1] and is finalized when the Electoral College votes in December and when their ballots are counted by a joint session of Congress in January. If a sitting President has won re-election, he is not referred to as a "President-elect" because he is already in office and is not waiting to become president. If a new President is scheduled to enter, then the current-standing one is said to hold the office on a lame-duck basis.^[2]

Constitutional criteria

Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the United States Constitution, along with the Twelfth and Twentieth Amendments govern the election of the U.S. President. The members of the Electoral College are elected by the people in November once every four years in a general election; on the Monday after the second Wednesday in December, electors convene in their respective state capitals (and the District of Columbia) and in turn elect the President of the United States. The electoral ballots are counted in a joint session of Congress in early January (on January 6 as required by 3 U.S. Code, Chapter 1 or an alternative date set by statute) and if the ballots are accepted without objections, the candidate winning at least 270 electoral votes is announced the President-elect by the incumbent Vice President, in his or her capacity as President of the Senate.

Electoral College role

No constitutional provision or federal law requires electors to vote according to the results of their states' popular vote, though some states bind their electors to their pledges by state law. Historically, there have been only a few instances of electors not casting their ballots for the candidates to whom they were pledged, and such instances have never resulted in changing the final outcome of a presidential election.^[3]

Congressional reports

Two congressional reports found that the President-elect is the eventual winner of the majority of electoral ballots cast in December. The Congressional Research Service (CRS) of the Library of Congress, in its 2004 report "Presidential and Vice Presidential Succession: Overview and Current Legislation,"^[4] discussed the question of when candidates who have received a majority of electoral votes become President-elect. The report notes that the constitutional status of the President-elect is disputed:

Some commentators doubt whether an official President- and Vice President-elect exist prior to the electoral votes being counted and announced by Congress on January 6, maintaining that this is a problematic contingency lacking clear constitutional or statutory direction. Others assert that once a majority of electoral votes has been cast for one ticket, then the recipients of these votes become the President- and Vice President-elect, notwithstanding the fact that the votes are not counted and certified until the following January 6.

The CRS report quotes the 1933 U.S. House committee report accompanying the Twentieth Amendment as endorsing the latter view:

It will be noted that the committee uses the term "President elect" in its generally accepted sense, as meaning the person who has received the majority of electoral votes, or the person who has been chosen by the House of Representatives in the event that the election is thrown into the House. It is immaterial whether or not the votes have been counted, for the person becomes the President elect as soon as the votes are cast.^[5]

Both reports make clear that becoming President-elect is contingent upon winning the majority of electoral votes.

President-elect succession

Scholars have noted that the national committees of the Democratic and Republican parties have adopted rules for selecting replacement candidates in the event of a nominee's death, either before or after the general election. If the apparent winner of the general election dies before the Electoral College votes in December the electors probably would endorse whatever new nominee their national party selects as a replacement (although they may be prevented from doing so in many states, because those states have laws requiring electors to vote for the person they're pledged to, and some states invalidates votes that were cast for anyone else). If the apparent winner dies between the College's December vote and its counting in Congress in January, the Twelfth Amendment stipulates that all electoral ballots cast shall be counted, presumably even those for a dead candidate. The U.S. House committee reporting on the proposed Twentieth Amendment said the "Congress would have 'no discretion' [and] 'would declare that the deceased candidate had received a majority of the votes.'"^[6]

In cases where a President has not been chosen by January 20 or the President-elect "fails to qualify," the Vice President-elect becomes Acting President on January 20 until there is a qualified President. If the President-elect dies before noon January 20, the Twentieth Amendment states the Vice President-elect becomes President. In cases where there is no President-elect or Vice President-elect, the Amendment also gives the Congress the authority to declare an Acting President until such time as there is a President or Vice President. At this point the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 would apply, with the office of the Presidency going to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, followed by the President pro tempore of the Senate and various Cabinet officers.

The closest instance of a Vice President-elect becoming President came just 23 days after the ratification of the Twentieth Amendment. On February 15, 1933, Giuseppe Zangara fired a gun at President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, but missed, instead hitting Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak. If the assassination attempt on Roosevelt had been successful then, pursuant to Section 3 of the amendment, Vice President-elect John Nance Garner would have been sworn in as President on Inauguration Day (March 4, 1933).

Presidential transitions

Recent Presidents-elect have assembled Presidential transition teams to prepare for a smooth transfer of power following the inauguration. Outgoing Presidents have cooperated with the President-elect on important policy matters during the last two months of the President's term to ensure a smooth transition and continuity of operations that have significant national interests. Before the ratification of the Twentieth Amendment in 1933, which moved the start of the Presidential term to January, the President-elect did not assume office until March, four months after the popular election.

The Presidential Transition Act of 1963^[1] authorizes the Administrator of the General Services Administration to certify, even before the December vote of the Electoral College, the apparent winner of the November general election as the President-elect for the purposes of receiving federal transition funding, office space and communications services prior to the beginning of the new administration on January 20.^[7]

The President-elect assumes office as the next President of the United States of America upon the expiration of the term of the previous office-holder at noon on January 20. This procedure has been the subject of many misinterpretations and urban legends, such as the myth of David Rice Atchison's one-day-long presidency, which is predicated upon false assumptions and a logical flaw. Taking the formal oath of office does not affect the automatic accession to and occupation of the office of the presidency, which, in the case of the U.S. President, proceeds, ipso facto, from the expiration of the predecessor's term.

The President-elect and Vice President-elect receive mandatory protection from the United States Secret Service, but since the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, they have received such protection during the election campaign.

List of U.S. Presidents-elect

Party shadings
None	Federalist	Democratic-Republican
Democratic	Whig	Republican

Order	Name	From	To
1	George Washington	January 10, 1789	April 30, 1789
2	John Adams	1796	March 4, 1797
3	Thomas Jefferson	February 17, 1801[8]	March 4, 1801
4	James Madison	1808	March 4, 1809
5	James Monroe	1816	March 4, 1817
6	John Quincy Adams	February 9, 1825[8]	March 4, 1825
7	Andrew Jackson	December 3, 1828	March 4, 1829
8	Martin Van Buren	December 7, 1836	March 4, 1837
9	William Henry Harrison	December 2, 1840	March 4, 1841
10	James Polk	December 4, 1844	March 4, 1845
11	Zachary Taylor	November 7, 1848	March 4, 1849[9]
12	Franklin Pierce	November 2, 1852	March 4, 1853
13	James Buchanan	November 4, 1856	March 4, 1857
14	Abraham Lincoln	November 6, 1860	March 4, 1861
15	Ulysses Grant	November 3, 1868	March 4, 1869
16	Rutherford Hayes	March 2, 1877[10]	March 4, 1877[11]
17	James Garfield	November 2, 1880	March 4, 1881
18	Grover Cleveland	November 4, 1884	March 4, 1885
19	Benjamin Harrison	November 6, 1888	March 4, 1889
20	Grover Cleveland	November 8, 1892	March 4, 1893
21	William McKinley	November 3, 1896	March 4, 1897
22	William Taft	November 3, 1908	March 4, 1909
23	Woodrow Wilson	November 5, 1912	March 4, 1913
24	Warren Harding	November 2, 1920	March 4, 1921
25	Herbert Hoover	November 6, 1928	March 4, 1929
26	Franklin D. Roosevelt	November 8, 1932	March 4, 1933
27	Dwight Eisenhower	November 4, 1952	January 20, 1953
28	John F. Kennedy	November 9, 1960 [12]	January 20, 1961
29	Richard Nixon	November 5, 1968	January 20, 1969
30	Jimmy Carter	November 2, 1976	January 20, 1977
31	Ronald Reagan	November 4, 1980	January 20, 1981
32	George H. W. Bush	November 8, 1988	January 20, 1989
33	Bill Clinton	November 3, 1992	January 20, 1993
34	George W. Bush	December 13, 2000[13]	January 20, 2001
35	Barack Obama (Details)	November 4, 2008	January 20, 2009

See also

• Presidential transition of Barack Obama‎
• President-elect
• Presidential transition
• Office of the President-Elect of the United States

References

1. ^ ^{a b} "Presidential Transition Act of 1963 (Public Law 88-277)". General Services Administration. http://www.gsa.gov/Portal/gsa/ep/contentView.do?contentType=GSA_BASIC&contentId=24780&noc=T. Retrieved 2008-11-17. 
2. ^ "Lame Duck Definition". Dictionary.com. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/lame%20duck. Retrieved 2009-05-20. 
3. ^ "U.S. National Archives and Records Administration FAQ". http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/faq.html#popular. Retrieved 2008-11-23. "The Supreme Court has held that the Constitution does not require that electors be completely free to act as they choose and therefore, political parties may extract pledges from electors to vote for the parties' nominees." 
4. ^ http://lieberman.senate.gov/documents/crs/presidentialsuccession.pdf
5. ^ U.S. Congress, House, Proposing an Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, report to accompany S.J. Res. 14, 72nd Cong., 1st sess., Rept. 345 (Washington, GPO:1932), p. 6.
6. ^ Longley, Lawrence D.; Neal R. Peirce (1999). The Electoral College Primer 2000. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-08036-0. 
7. ^ In November 2000, the GSA administrator did not name a president-elect until the legal disputes over vote counting in Florida were resolved. Schrader, Esther (2000-11-28). "GSA Denies Bush Transition Aid, Citing Legal Battle". The Los Angeles Times. http://articles.latimes.com/2000/nov/28/news/mn-58239. Retrieved 2008-11-16. "It started early Monday, when the Bush team asked for access to the taxpayer-funded transition offices that are to be used by the president-elect. The General Services Administration refused, explaining it was best to wait until the legal challenges in Florida had run their course." 
8. ^ ^{a b} Date of election by House of Representatives
9. ^ Taylor was sworn in on March 5.
10. ^ Date the contested election was certified by Congress
11. ^ Hayes took his inauguration oath privately on March 3 and publicly on March 5.
12. ^ Date of election was November 8, 1960. Due to closeness of the election Richard Nixon did not concede until of the afternoon of November 9.
13. ^ This was the date Al Gore conceded following the U.S. Supreme Court's halting of recount efforts in Florida (See: Ian Christopher McCaleb (December 13, 2000). "Bush, now president-elect, signals will to bridge partisan gaps". CNN.com. http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/12/13/election.wrap/. Retrieved 2009-02-10. ).

External links

• Office of the President-Elect (President-elect Barack Obama)
• GSA Presidential Transition