Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have won the election! Why will this transition be messy?
After five grueling days, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris legally won the Presidential Election! We deserve a moment to celebrate after such a rough and draining year, and this is a pretty legendary win.
Here are some of the highlights of this important win:
Democratic voters overwhelmingly mailed-in their ballots to protect their health and safety
Mail-in ballots helped the Biden-Harris team gain the electoral votes needed to win in Pennsylvania.
Stacey Abrams and a team of progressive Black women leaders helped to get 800,000 Georgians registered to vote, turning the state blue.
Largely due to anti-Trump motivation, we had the largest voter turnout ever!
Now a smooth transition needs to happen, despite challenges to the election results. This, however, will be difficult for several reasons. Of course, Donald Trump plans to contest the results and has already begun to attempt to take legal action in states he expected to win.
Another major issue, that shouldn’t be one, is that the General Services Administration (GSA) plays a pretty significant role in presidential transitions. The GSA provides a presidential transition team with Washington office space and coordinates access to federal agencies, etc. In order to start this process, federal law states the GSA administrator must first issue a letter of "ascertainment" determining the likely winner of the race. The move is essentially a formal recognition by the current administration that a new president has been elected and a transition will occur.
Oddly, the administrator of GSA is an appointed position. Emily W. Murphy was appointed by Donald Trump to lead the agency. If there is one thing the Trump administration and ideology has taught us, is that they do NOT believe in following rules. Trump has empowered them to believe they are above the law.
Let’s just hope that our often shady and discriminatory justice system follows the law to the letter in this situation, and helps the Biden-Harris administration transition smoothly into office