The demand for tickets to president-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration is off the charts.
According to the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, tickets to the 56th Inaugural Ceremonies will be provided free of charge and distributed through Members of Congress or U.S. Senators.
Sen. Lindsey Graham said his office has received more than a thousand requests for about 300 tickets.
Graham said every request is not going to be filled, but he'll try to be as fair as possible.
"We've got a couple of goals to make sure the state is represented geographically, the people who you know were close to senator Obama’s campaign, now president elect Obama’s campaign, that we'll accommodate them and be fair to the general population." Graham said.
Congressman Henry Brown's press secretary Katie McKinney said Browns’ office has received more than 1,500 requests, for about 250 tickets.
McKinney said the tickets will be given out on a first come, first served basis and they will be taking a close look at people who have requested tickets in the past.
“We have had thousands of ticket requests and they are still coming in, in large numbers. As in previous elections, the requests are being logged and we are working with the other members of the South Carolina delegation to ensure that as many south Carolinians as possible are able to attend the festivities.” McKinney said.
According to the Associated Press, Sen. Dianne Feinstein said she’s writing to internet sites like eBay to ask them not to sell scalped inauguration tickets. Sen. Feinstein also said she’s working on a bill that would make selling tickets to the historic event a federal crime.
The Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies said no website or other ticket outlet actually has Inaugural swearing-in tickets to sell, regardless of what they claim.
Graham said he’s read about some internet sites that are selling tickets, some for very high prices and said the Inauguration is a public event and special moment in American history that is not for sale.
"I don't like selling these tickets to the highest bidder at all, the tickets that we will allocate are based on as fair a method as we can come up with and money shouldn't be part of it." said Graham.
Neither Sen. Graham nor Congressman Brown are taking any more requests for tickets
Sen. Jim DeMint and Congressman James Clyburn were also given a number of tickets to give to their constituents.
Hope Derrick, with Cong. Clyburn's office said they are still taking applications for tickets on the Congressman's website. Derrick said they still don't know how many tickets they will be allotted, but they have already received more than 3500 requests.
You can find out more about the Inaugural ceremony by logging on to http://inaugural.senate.gov/index.cfm.
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