Four months from today

The four election stages between now and Inauguration Day

Sep 20, 2024

It’s official: the first ballots are in the mail for the 2024 election. More or less continuously through Election Day, 46 days from now, someone somewhere will be casting their vote in the presidential election.

And exactly four months from today — noon on January 20th — the next president will be sworn in on the steps of the Capitol.

Between now and then, thousands of people will work together so that we can all cast our ballots, those votes get accurately counted, and whoever wins takes office. Normally, most people don’t pay a lot of attention to that process as a whole — we often just focus on Election Day — but it will be ongoing pretty much continuously for the next four months.

Loosely speaking, the process has four distinct stages: 1) pre-election preparations and mail voting, 2) in-person voting, both early and on Election Day, 3) counting, checking, canvassing, and certification, and then 4) the Electoral College process.

In each step, actors seeking to undermine the election — or to lay the groundwork to do so if it doesn’t go their way — could try to cause trouble. In most cases, these tactics are about sowing doubt and distrust.

How you can set the election up for success: First, check your registration; second, consider signing up to be a poll worker; third, if you’re voting by mail, mail your ballot early to make sure it arrives on time, and fourth, don't believe everything you read — here's the four stages to this presidential election and what bad-faith actors are trying to do to disrupt it:

Stage 1: Pre-election preparation & mail-in voting

Between now and mid-October, local election officials across the country will be working nonstop to set up the infrastructure to vote.

They’re hiring and training staff (sign up to be a poll worker!), finalizing voter rolls, testing their equipment and ballot design — this is done transparently and in-public, I’ll note — and setting up voting locations.

Voter registration deadlines vary by state, so be sure to check yours before it’s too late.

The risks and who might cause them:

Bad-faith actors will likely continue to spread lies about voter registration, especially lies about who is registered or eligible to vote. Read more here.
Insufficient poll worker recruitment could leave election administrators short-staffed, causing delays. Again, sign up to be a poll worker!
Election denier groups continue to recruit volunteers to monitor drop boxes and surveil voters. Already this year, the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s decision to reinstate drop boxes has fueled online chatter about the need to monitor voters dropping off ballots and even follow them home. Surveillance tactics that intimidate or threaten voters are illegal.
There will likely be continued frivolous efforts to mass-disqualify voters, especially by election subversion groups (these will not succeed, but the point is to cast doubt).
There could be potential USPS delays — it’s likely not going to be a major issue, but always tell everyone you know to get their mail votes in early or drop them off in-person. Just in case.

Stage 2: Early voting and Election Day

Most states offer some form of early voting, with the specifics varying by state. More states have offered or expanded early voting since 2020. (Turns out, even when it’s not a pandemic, it’s convenient for voters and helpful for election workers to allow people to vote on more than just one day.)

Then, November 5th is the big day.

All the way through Election Day, there are extensive safeguards in place to ensure a fair process. Our elections are staffed by networks of poll workers — some independent, some representing a political party. And bipartisan watchers are able to examine the process.

One really key thing to know: while networks may “call” results on election night or in the days following, they are saying that the margin of victory is such that the other candidate can’t close the gap. Official results — counted, canvassed, certified — will come in the weeks following.

Some dynamics bad actors might exploit and tactics they may employ:

We could see illegal attempts to intimidate voters or election workers, similar to what we saw in the midterms. Election workers across the country are continuing to face threats, including violent ones.
As happens somewhere in almost every election, there may be some issues with voting machines, unexpectedly long lines, and other administrative issues. The important thing to watch is how quickly these issues get resolved so they don’t get blown out of proportion.
In certain states, there could be another “red mirage / blue shift” effect as votes are counted. Because historically Republicans and Democrats have tended to have different preferences between in-person and mail-in voting, that can cause shifts in who is “leading” in early returns based on which ballots are tabulated when.
Finally — most importantly — one candidate in particular may quickly cast doubts on the results in an effort to lay the groundwork to undermine an outcome he doesn’t like.

Stage 3: Counting, checking, canvassing, and certification

Once everyone’s voted, votes are counted; the results are checked (in a process called canvassing); county canvassers certify the results (that’s a non-discretionary role); and the governor — or another state executive — signs a certificate of ascertainment by December 11th, the new federal deadline.

Throughout this whole process (when, exactly, depends on the state), there can be audits to ensure that the tabulation was correct, as well as litigation and challenges to handle any disputes. In particularly close races, recounts may happen. Again, it varies some by state, but the point is: there are always a variety of measures to ensure that votes are counted accurately, as well as ample opportunities for the candidates to raise concerns or disputes.

Normal delays vs. weaponized delays:

Vote-counting will not be complete on Election Day in at least some places, especially Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Again, this is pretty normal. The processes should be complete with plenty of time for states to meet the deadlines in the Electoral Count Reform Act.
But if there are bad-faith and deliberate delays to try to push against those deadlines — such as frivolous litigation to try to gum up the process — timing could become a more significant issue.
County or state officials could attempt to refuse to do their jobs — or be pressured to do so. That might require the courts to step in and enforce the law; so far no certification interference in the 30-some attempts we’ve seen since 2020 has prevailed.

Stage 4: The Electoral College, Congress, and then Inauguration Day

As you probably know, when we vote for a president, we’re technically voting for a slate of electors — they’re actual people — who will meet in their states and cast their Electoral College votes for a presidential and vice presidential candidate.

That must happen on December 17th. And the certificates are due to Congress by Christmas Day, December 25th.

Then, on January 3rd, a new Congress — the people we’ll all elect in November — is sworn in. They’ll convene for a joint session on January 6th (yes, it’s scheduled by law for January 6th again) to formally count the electoral votes.

Finally, at noon on January 20th, 2025, the next president will take office.

Disrupting the Electoral College process might again be a last-ditch strategy to overturn the election results should Donald Trump lose in November.

Here’s why our country will be better prepared this time:

Thanks to the Electoral Count Reform Act, this process is a lot more robust this time around. For example, objections can only be in order if they are signed by one-fifth of each chamber, instead of just one senator and one representative.
The possibility of violence and intimidation is now widely recognized by law enforcement across the country. They’ll be much better prepared.
After the midterms, the governors and chief elections officials in virtually all the key swing states are committed to ensuring a free and fair election.
Collectively, as a country, we are much more knowledgeable about and familiar with how this all works. The fact that so many voters know the details of how our presidential elections are run — right down to the technical minutia — is a big part of how we protect the process.

(If you want to find out more about the Electoral Count Reform Act, the Campaign Legal Center will be hosting a virtual deep-dive on all this next Tuesday. Register here.)

Throughout these next four months, we at If you can keep it will be here to keep you updated all the way.

Congress takes a big step on presidential emergency powers

On Wednesday, both the Senate Homeland Security Committee and the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee passed legislation (here and here) that would rein in presidential emergency powers and install an important congressional check on the presidency. Still a ways to go before these reforms become law, but the overwhelming bipartisan support is a great sign.

Elise Wirkus explains:

Presidents have the power to declare national emergencies in order to react to sudden, unforeseen events. When a president declares a national emergency, more than 140 new legal authorities become available to them — like shutting down communications facilities and seizing private property.
Given these vast authorities, it is not difficult to envision how a president could misuse or abuse emergency powers, or use them to advance policy goals that cannot pass through Congress. Even worse, under current law it is nearly impossible for Congress to check an emergency declaration given by the president.
The legislation that advanced this week would fix this by automatically terminating a national emergency declaration unless a majority of the House and Senate vote to continue the emergency. This solution balances the need for the president to act quickly in a true emergency while ensuring that Congress can more easily check abuses of these powers.

Read more about why presidential emergency powers are such a big deal here.

What else we’re tracking:

Speaking of threats to election officials, Donald Trump again pledged to weaponize the Justice Department against the people who run our elections if he wins. The New York Times reports on the implications.
Another year, another step backwards for democracy globally — at least, that’s according to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA). “Last year had the worst decline in credible elections and parliamentary oversight in almost a half-century.”
Last week, the confirmation hearing for the nominee to be the chief of the Pentagon's National Guard Bureau highlighted the need to recalibrate the growing reliance on the National Guard as a policy stopgap at the border and in schools that threatens its ability to carry out its traditional military mission. Count Every Hero has published a set of principles to help evaluate the appropriateness of these non-traditional deployments.
The Bulwark’s A.B. Stoddard explores the implications of Trump’s return to sowing doubts about mail-in voting: “Trump attacks the post office — and democracy.”
“A bipartisan group of former governors is launching a campaign to convince their successors to certify their states’ votes,” organized by Keep Our Republic. Politico has the story.
In the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Farbod Faraji & Flávia Pellegrino compare the lessons from the U.S. and Brazil when it comes to “containing, countering, and sustainably preventing the corruption of elections by authoritarian leaders.”
Charles M. Blow writes about how “Trump’s bogus claims about Haitians are part of a bigger agenda.” It’s an attempt to justify nativist immigration policies and “to link broader anti-immigrant sentiment with anti-Black sentiment.”
Speaking of — Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, a Republican, says there have been at least 33 bomb threats in Springfield, all hoaxes and many coming from abroad. Still, he deployed state police there on Wednesday.
14 of the “fake electors” from 2020 are back on their states’ Republican slates of representatives to the Electoral College, reports NPR’s Hansi Lo Wang.