To my understanding, tickets for the swearing-in ceremony of the Inauguration can be requested from local members of the House of Representatives. Is this the only way anyone can get in to watch the swearing in of the next President? I have the feeling that a lot of people are going to want to crowd in on the mall, and apparently preparations are already being made for cramming three million ( :eek: ) people out there.
Are the tickets, then, just for people who get to cram closer up? Or who get chairs?
A lot of the “free” tickets are getting scalped, so I guess you could call that another way of getting a ticket. Some legislators, such as Feinstein, are being publicly indignant about the ticket scalping, and some online venues have halted sales of them. EBay has, for instance. Feinstein is attempting to pass a bill making scalping the inauguration tickets a misdemeanor.
Not an answer to your question, but I read the suggestion somewhere that those seeking tickets ask a Republican member of the House (such as one from Oklahoma, say), since the same number of tickets are given to each Representative, and those in Democratic districts are going to have more demand among their constituents.
*"Every House member receives 198 inaugural tickets, to distribute however the lawmaker sees fit. The allocation includes 177 tickets for standing and 19 tickets for sitting. Two tickets are assigned to the lawmaker and significant other.
Every senator receives about 350 tickets. All told, about 240,000 tickets will be available."*
Demand, as you’d expect, exceeds supply by orders of magnitude.
That’s because no tickets have been released yet. Congressional offices will not release the tickets until 1 week before the inauguration according to my Senator. I beleive that fraud by deceit is already a felony, don’t see a need for a new misdemeanor law.
This may be one of the few times it’s handy to live in Texas, then.
But are we meant to be requesting reserved tickets? I’m not a huge donor, being poor, so I’m not likely to be at the top of anyone’s list. However, I’m in one of the blue areas of Texas, so our local Congresscritter is probably going to have lots of people asking. Apparently the Congressmen in general are getting lots and lots of requests, so I guess I could whip off a letter.
Well, I don’t see it as fraud if you have, in fact, reserved a ticket, and are simply promising to hand your ticket over to somebody else when you get it in return for compensation. I would assume that’s what is going on. NPR had a thing on this yesterday, specifically mentioning this site, which is facilitating the scalping:
Nobody has been reserved a ticket yet. You will not even know if you got one until a week before the inauguration. To claim that you have one of the congressional tickets reserved is fraud.
But what people might do is represent tickets for other inaugural events (such as balls and receptions) as bonifde congressional tickets.
I have my name on my local Representative’s list, and Senator Feingold’s list. Senator Kohl is no longer taking names to add to his list.
Both Feingold and my Representative’s office both told me that they neither know how many tickets they are going to get, nor how they plan on deciding who is going to get tickets.
I’ve heard rumors of lottery style distribution, but according to who I talked to today, they just haven’t yet decided.
I believe that the Members of Congress will distribute to those only in their district, which makes sense. And with an average of 600,000 people in each Congressional district, I am sure a few hundred people would be interested in tickets, even in ruby red country.
As **kunilou **posts, you need tix to get in close to see the swearing-in, but you don’t need tickets to watch the inagural parade or to congregate on the Mall. Last time they had big screens up; I’m sure they’ll do the same this year.
