Monday, January 25, will be a momentous and solemn day, as the House sadly transmits the Article of Impeachment for Donald Trump to the Senate.
Our Constitution and country are well-served by our outstanding impeachment managers – lead manager Rep. Jamie Raskin and Reps. Diana DeGette, David Cicilline, Joaquin Castro, Eric Swalwell, Ted Lieu, Stacy Plaskett, Madeleine Dean, and Joe Neguse. I salute them for the great love of our country, dedication to our democracy and loyalty to our oath with which they have proceeded, as they ensure that no one is above the law.
The House has been respectful of the Senate’s constitutional power over the trial and always attentive to the fairness of the process. When the Article of Impeachment is transmitted to the Senate, the former President will have had nearly two weeks since we passed the Article. Our Managers are ready for trial before the 100 Senate jurors.
The Senate will begin Trump’s second impeachment trial the week of February 8. They call it “Stormy Monday.” For Donald John Trump, Tuesday and the coming weeks will be just as bad.
I am a longtime voting rights advocate. Under the auspices of the National Endowment for Democracy, I monitored elections in Ethiopia and Nigeria, and led voter education workshops in Angola and Kazakhstan. The American democracy is the gold standard for free and fair elections. As votes are counted in the 2020 presidential election, it feels like déjà vu.
When the polls closed in the 2000 presidential election, the race between Al Gore and George W. Bush was too close to call. The winner would be determined by Florida’s electoral votes. For 36 days, the streets were filled with protesters chanting “Count Every Vote” and “Stop the Count.” At the same time in the suites, partisans on both sides were filing lawsuits. Gore asked for hand recounts in Democratic-leaning counties only. Bush took his case all the way to the United States Supreme Court. In a 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court stopped the recounts on the grounds they violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. With that decision, Bush won Florida by a margin of 537 votes out of six million cast.
Punch card voting machines have since been replaced by electronic voting machines. But then as now, the perceived loser is cherry-picking election results. President Donald Trump is challenging the vote count in selected states. Then as now Roger Stone is engaged in dirty tricks. Also then as now, partisans are spreading conspiracy theories. As in 2000, the absence of evidence of a conspiracy to “steal the election” is evidence of the conspiracy.
Trump’s baseless claims of “vote tabulation irregularities” undermine confidence in the integrity of the election. The machinery of our democracy has changed over the years. For instance, in 2000 I cast my vote on an 800-pound lever voting machine in Brooklyn. Now living in Philadelphia, I voted by mail and tracked my ballot status online. What remains unchanged is that public trust in the electoral process separates the American republic from, say, a banana republic.
Since 1989, The Carter Center, founded by former president Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn Carter, has monitored more than 110 elections in Africa, Latin America and Asia. For the first time, the Carter Center will monitor a U.S. election. CEO Paige Alexander said in a statement:
What we’re monitoring is what many people have been calling the hand recount. Because the margin in the presidential race is so close, this sort of audit essentially requires review of every ballot by hand. This is unusual, but it provides an opportunity to build trust in the electoral system prior to the state’s certification of results.
Voter trust is the bedrock of our democracy. The 2020 presidential election is yet another reminder that the right to vote and to have that vote counted cannot be taken for granted. As Pennsylvania and other states certify the election results, the whole world will be watching.
Election 2020 has been a long time coming. More than 95 million ballots have been cast as of this writing. If you opted to vote in person, be sure to confirm your polling place location before heading out.
BET and its partners launched #ReclaimYourVote, a voter education and voter mobilization campaign:
This year-long, nonpartisan campaign -- #ReclaimYourVote -- will galvanize our community by educating, engaging and empowering action. BET will execute a high-energy campaign that lays out the biggest issues, breaks down otherwise confusing processes and highlights specific ways we can reclaim our collective power.
To register to vote, check your registration, locate your polling place, or information about vote by mail or early voting options in your state, visit vote.org.
As of this writing, Election Day is 51 days away. Get ready, y’all.
On Saturday, Joe Biden kicked off his third presidential campaign. Biden said he chose Philadelphia for his campaign launch and headquarters because “this was the birthplace of our democracy”:
So why do we begin this journey in this place – Philadelphia? Because this was the birthplace of our democracy. It was here that two of the most important documents in the world’s history were written.
In 1776, the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” Those words formed the American creed. Equality. Equity. Fairness. America didn’t live up to that promise for most of its people, for people of color, for women.
It is self-evident blacks were not included in the nation’s founding documents. The Declaration of Independence was written by Thomas Jefferson, a slave owner. Biden said, “Just look at the facts, not the alternative facts.” Fact is, African Americans were stripped of their humanity and deemed the property of “We the people.” Chattel slavery was not a broken promise. It was foundational to the nation’s economy and political representation.
In 1787, slaveholders and their sympathizers were holed up in Independence Hallfixing the Constitution to preserve African Americans as their property. Slavery is enshrined in the third clause of Article IV, Section 2:
No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.
At the same time, others were fighting to end slavery.
Biden’s campaign kickoff was held on the anniversary of Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 Supreme Court decision that upheld the constitutionality of segregated public accommodations if they were “separate but equal.”
The Jim Crow regime was not dismantled until the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Biden’s assertion about “One America” begs the question: When have we ever been “One America?”
Fact is, Biden’s revisionist history is not novel. Brushing aside slavery, America’s original sin, is the “American creed.” As the nation commemorates 400 years of African American history, we must continue to fight to ensure our story is told and preserved in public memory. Does that make us angry? Novelist and cultural critic James Baldwin observed:
To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious, is to be in a rage almost all the time.
