The Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies has finally put out a press release about how to go about getting tickets to Barack Obama’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2009. Here’s what the release says:
Tickets to the 56th Inaugural Ceremonies will be provided free of charge and distributed through Members of the 111th Congress. The Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies does not provide tickets to the public. Members of the public interested in attending the Inaugural Ceremonies should contact their Member of Congress or U.S. Senators to request tickets.
The public should also be aware that no website or other ticket outlet actually has inaugural swearing-in tickets to sell, regardless of what they may claim. Tickets will not be distributed to Congressional offices until the week before the inauguration and will require in-person pick-up.
“Any website or ticket broker claiming that they have inaugural tickets is simply not telling the truth,” said Howard Gantman, Staff Director for the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies. “Tickets for the swearing-in of President-elect are all provided through members of Congress, and the President-elect and Vice President-elect through the Presidential Inaugural Committee. We urge the public to view any offers of tickets for sale with great skepticism.”
This morning D.C. Wire reported that D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton’s office has already fielded 1,000 phone calls from constituents looking for inauguration tickets, but that Norton has no idea how many tickets she’ll actually get. Given that we only have the one delegate and no senators, sounds like it’s possible D.C. residents could end up getting the shaft as far as how many tickets are allotted to us versus the similarly-sized states – though we won’t know that for sure until the tickets are sent out in January. In the meantime, you can try calling Norton’s office and ask to be put on a waiting list, or else find someone who lives in a congressional district to put in a request to their representative for you and then arrange for them to be here to pick up the ticket in person, with ID.
MORE: Norton’s office is now requesting that registered D.C. voters not call to be put on the request list, but rather email nortoninaugurationrequests(at)gmail.com with your name, e-mail address, home address, and telephone number. “We have talked to President-Elect Barack Obama’s office and have been informed that the presidential inaugural committee has not been formed and no details have been discussed or determined. We have been informed that relatively few tickets will be made available to members of Congress,” says a statement on her web site.
EVEN MORE: Shadow Sen. Paul Strauss tells us that he and Shadow Senator Michael D. Brown will be getting their own allotment of tickets. Strauss said he will likely allocate some portion of his tickets to D.C. residents by a lottery.
“Since I don’t know how large the allotment will be, we do not have a distribution plan yet, but I intend to do what I can to make sure as many DC residents as possible get to attend,” Strauss said.
Photo by Scott Ableman
