How a peaceful transition of presidential power works

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As his campaign team presses forward in a dogged battle to assert that President Trump may still have a shot at a second term in the White House, others have called on the president to concede, accusing him of holding up the peaceful transition of power. 

Trump’s lawyers are filing lawsuits in bulk in swing states across the country, alleging potential mass voter fraud and procedural violations in the vote count. In Georgia, votes are being recounted after Biden’s razor-thin majority. 

Meanwhile, President-elect Joe Biden is pushing forward with a transition team, after Fox News and other outlets called the race in his favor. 

Biden’s transition to power is dependent on an obscure declaration known as “ascertainment.” 

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As the two sides dispute who will hold the highest office come Jan. 20, here’s what a peaceful transition of power would need to look like. 

First, the federal General Services Administration must name a "successful candidate."

The administrator of the federal General Services Administration must ascertain the “apparent successful candidate” in the election, but has not yet done so. The Presidential Transition Act does not specify how that determination should be made, but that decision kickstarts the rest of the federal government’s moves towards preparing a handover of power.

The determination would allow millions of dollars to flow to Biden’s transition team and would allow Biden staffers to begin assessing federal agency operations. The Biden-Harris team must fill about 4,000 political appointments across government. 

The GSA is an executive branch, and its administrator, Emily Murphy, is a Trump appointee. However, ascertainment decisions are typically apolitical. 

 “An ascertainment has not yet been made. GSA and its Administrator will continue to abide by, and fulfill, all requirements under the law and adhere to prior precedent established by the Clinton Administration in 2000,” a GSA spokesperson said in a statement to The Associated Press this week. 

On Thursday, a group of nearly 150 bipartisan former national security officials wrote a letter to Murphy, warning that the government’s delay in recognizing Joe Biden as president-elect poses a “serious risk to national security.”

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Then, vote counts must be finalized by the time electors vote for the next president, the date of which is designated in the Constitution as the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December. This year it falls on Dec. 14. 

If the vote were to still be disputed in several states -- enough that a majority can’t be determined for one candidate -- then the count goes to the House of Representatives, where each state delegation, not each House member, gets one vote. 

As the House stands now, Republicans control 26 delegations to Democrats’ 24, but state delegations vote based on the incoming House, where Republicans made gains this election cycle. 

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But if elections were disputed and state delegations could not come to a consensus by noon on Jan. 20, when Trump’s term ends, power would be transferred in line of succession. It wouldn’t go to the vice president since he is involved in the disputed election; it would instead go to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., if she is reelected speaker.