President-Elect Joe Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris addressed the nation Saturday night after their projected victory in the 2020 presidential election when Harris said, “Now, the real work begins.”
The campaign behind them, the work of their presidential administration starts with actually transitioning into power. Karen Hult, a professor of political science at Virginia Tech, told WTOP that process started months ago.
“The formal transition, from a U.S. government perspective, really starts after each party nominates its presidential candidate,” she said.
Now that Biden’s projected to win, more steps are underway to transition power from the Trump administration to a Biden one. The Biden administration has launched its transition website and is set to formally announce its coronavirus pandemic task force Monday.
The focus now for the Biden-Harris team is to build out the Cabinet and fill more than 4,000 positions that new presidents are responsible for.
Hult said the formal transition process won’t proceed until President Trump concedes the race, which he’s refused to do even though most media outlets have called the race for Biden. The director of the General Services Administration, Emily Murphy (a Trump nominee), must also acknowledge Biden’s victory before formal transition work can begin.
Electoral College electors in each state don’t vote until Dec. 14, and the electors’ votes typically align with the popular vote in each state. Certificates recording the electoral vote results in each state must be received by the president of the Senate and the archivist no later than Dec. 23.
The official results of the electoral votes are sent to the new elected Congress, which is set to meet in a joint session on Jan. 6, 2021, and announce the results.
Hult said it’s likely the GSA director will start the formal transition process before the electors vote Dec. 14.
“This is a fraught time for everybody — there’s celebration on the one hand and on the other hand there’s disappointment, in some cases anger. So that complicates some of the personal relationships that will have to develop during a formal transition period,” Hult said.
The “gold standard” for transition processes, according to Holt, was George W. Bush’s handoff to the incoming Barack Obama administration.
When President Trump was elected, he changed his transition team by firing director of the team Chris Christie and threw out all the preparation documents. Hult said the Biden-Harris team is aware of that experience and working to avoid a repeat.
“We are trying to make this as smooth and constructive as possible, and I think that’s what’s playing out right now,” Hult said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
