A president’s removal from office is one of the most solemn responsibilities afforded to Congress. It cuts to the heart of the relationship between the citizenry and their representatives, the act of voting, and the principle that no person is above the law.
Those principles inform why I deeply disagree with former GOP adviser Juleanna Glover’s argument on Tuesday that the Senate should introduce a rule change to allow senators to cast secret impeachment votes. Writing for Politico, Glover asks, “What if senators could vote on impeachment by secret ballot? If they didn’t have to face backlash from constituents or the media or the president himself, who knows how many Republican senators would vote to remove?”
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Glover suggests this rule change would be justified in that trial jurors often vote in private.
It’s a silly argument with a silly excuse.
First off, the difference between trial jurors and senators is that the latter are voting out of free choice. If senators don’t want their votes recorded and their records scrutinized, they have no business serving in the Senate.
That speaks to the broader moral point here: the accountability of politicians to those who gave them their power. On an issue as controversial and consequential as impeachment, accountability and visibility are more crucial than ever.
To allow senators to cast impeachment votes and then to deny voters the right to know those votes would be profoundly un-American.
It is something that belongs in the Chinese Politburo, not the world’s greatest democratic chamber. And if the principle is set here, why not extend it to other controversial votes? Those on matters of war and peace, for example? Once we go down this road, we quickly end up with a democracy in which the people have no idea about what those who are supposed to serve them are actually doing.
Glover, however, doesn’t seem to get this. Indeed, she seems determined to play to Trump’s often-false narrative that a cabal of “deep state” operators is out to get him. Glover explains why she believes Trump might resign his office were a secret ballot approaching. Referencing investigations of Trump in New York, she hopes that a secret ballot would make Trump realize “his best course could be to cut a deal, trading his office for a get-out-of-jail-free card — a clean slate from prosecutors.”
Does Glover not understand how bad this sounds?
Glover is calling for a looming secret vote in the heart of America’s democracy in order to pressure Trump to surrender to the current investigations before any charges have been issued. This is defining authoritarian arrogance: wedding a newly unaccountable legislature to weaponized partisan investigations in order to remove a democratically elected executive from office.
It is astonishing. If ever attempted, it would drive Trump’s supporters into a furious and legitimate rage.
Fortunately, I suspect that even those most Trump-skeptical of Republican senators would see Glover’s idea as I do. They will find the courage to vote on impeachment as they should: with accountability and in full assessment of the president’s conduct.
