Tickets to the 56th Inaugural Ceremonies are free of charge and are distributed through Members of the 111th Congress. If you are interested in attending the Inaugural Ceremonies you should contact me or Sen. Voinovich or Brown.
You can request tickets here. Please include your cell number so we can contact you.
As with previous Inaugural Ceremonies, we will distribute tickets through a lottery system due to the huge number of ticket requests. My office does not yet know the exact number of tickets that will be allotted to each Congressional office.
Please note: My office will not receive any tickets until the week before the Jan. 20th Inauguration, and we cannot mail tickets to any constituents. Congressional rules require that they be picked up in person at my Washington office.
If you receive a ticket to the Inaugural Ceremony on the West Front of the Capitol, it means you will have a guaranteed spot to stand and watch the swearing-in ceremony. As with previous ceremonies, security will be extraordinarily tight. The public can also watch the ceremony from the Mall without a ticket, but please know you will be a considerable distance from the actual ceremony. Also, there is generally some standing-room space along the parade route that is free to the public. Tourism officials in Washington, DC, expect that more than 3 million people will be in Washington for the historic swearing in of President-elect Barack Obama, and indicate that hotels are selling out as far away as Richmond, VA. Many hotels with available rooms are requiring a three or four night minimum stay.
The Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies has a web site with detailed information about the Inauguration and related events. You can visit the site here and you can also sign up for e-mail alerts through the site.
Finally, please be wary of paid tickets to the Inaugural. Howard Gantman, Staff Director for the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies issued this statement about paid tickets: “Any website or ticket broker claiming that they have inaugural tickets is simply not telling the truth. 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.”
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