[1][2] It is assumed the Congressional certification of votes cast by the Electoral College of the United States – occurring after the third day of January following the swearing-in of the new Congress, per provisions of the Twelfth Amendment – unambiguously confirms the successful candidate as the official "president-elect" under the U.S. Constitution.
Politicians and the media have applied the term to the projected winner, even on election night,[3] and very few who turned out to lose have been referred to as such.
The only constitutional provision pertaining directly to the person who has won the presidential election is their availability to take the oath of office.
There is evidence from some of these letters that, as is the case today, it may have been acceptable to apply the term to individuals that appeared to have won election, even before the full results were known.
[6] Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the United States Constitution, along with the Twelfth and Twentieth Amendments directly address and govern the process for electing the nation's president.
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.
[9]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.
The party's national committee, in consultation with the new president-elect, would then select a replacement to receive the electoral votes for vice president.
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.
The term was introduced through the Twentieth Amendment, ratified in 1933, which contained a provision addressing the unavailability of the president-elect to take the oath of office on Inauguration Day.
Four years later, President-elect James Buchanan battled a serious illness contracted at the National Hotel in Washington, D.C., as he planned his inauguration.
Additionally, on February 15, 1933, just 23 days after the Twentieth Amendment went into effect, President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt survived an assassination attempt in Miami, Florida.
Recent presidents-elect have assembled transition teams to prepare for a smooth transfer of power following the inauguration.
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.
111-283),[16] the president-elect is entitled to request and receive certain privileges from the General Services Administration (GSA) as they prepare to assume office.
"[12] In 2008, President-elect Barack Obama gave numerous speeches and press conferences in front of a placard emblazoned with "Office of the President Elect"[17] and used the same term on his website.
Typically, the GSA chief might make the decision after reliable news organizations have declared the winner or following a concession by the loser.
"[24] A second, opposite view is that the taking of the oath is a "ceremonial reminder of both the President's duty to execute the law and the status of the Constitution as supreme law" and is not a prerequisite to a person "exercis[ing] the powers of the Chief Executive"; the view can be partially based on the fact that the oath is not mentioned in the eligibility requirements for the presidency set forth elsewhere in Article II.