The document communicating Donald Trump’s indictment for trying to overturn the 2020 election opened with a simple truth: He lost that contest. From this starting point, it goes on to allege Trump’s refusal to accept losing power fueled a criminal conspiracy. On Threads, journalist Aaron Rupar imagined that this plain statement of truth would feel like a personal hit to the domination-obsessed Trump:
But it was the document’s final page, with the final charge and the signature of Jack Smith, that made it personal for the rest of us. Because what Trump also refused to accept, the indictment demonstrated, was the vote—our vote. This was what Trump tried to take away from each and every American:
From on or about November 14, 2020, through on or about January 20, 2021, in the District of Columbia and elsewhere, the Defendant, DONALD J. TRUMP, did knowingly combine, conspire, confederate, and agree with co-conspirators, known and unknown to the Grand Jury, to injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate one or more persons in the free exercise and enjoyment of a right and privilege secured to them by the Constitution and laws of the United States that is, the right to vote, and to have one's vote counted.
If the coup conspiracy alleged had succeeded, Trump wouldn’t just have stolen the election from Joe Biden. He wouldn’t just have stolen the votes of those Biden voters in the seven states where he and his allies tried to have fake electors deny the legitimate result. He would have stolen from each and every one of us.
This may seem like a duh. But it’s the count that keeps knocking me out.
Since Trump took office, I’ve often felt fear and horror. Trump Derangement Syndrome, it was mockingly called, but derangement was his goal. He worked to disorder and disarrange our government of the people. Whenever I worried I was becoming inured to his danger, another event—child separation, Charlottesville, January 6—would shake me. And while journalists, historians, and the impeachment and January 6 committees have further illuminated the nature and the depth of Trump’s threat to American democracy, this fourth count of his third indictment deeply resonates.
Democracy can seem abstract, and with the complexities of our system, remote. The word is grand, containing the sweep of history and evoking images of marble monuments. But it is not some idea apart from us. It is ideas in action, often life and death actions, that we shape and reshape with our votes.
The vote is not the only source of our power as citizens, but it is the key one. It has been violently denied and vigorously suppressed and can feel inconsequential and unequal and small, but it matters, makes big differences. This is seen most clearly in the brutality that results when it is denied or taken.
John Lewis’s words are a reminder of the personal sacrifice he and so many others have made to gain and protect the vote. The vote is not God-given and it has no guarantee of everlasting life. What makes it “almost sacred” is deeply personal. And that is why the charge of “Conspiracy Against Rights” hits so hard.
My parents raised me within two faiths. One did not stick; it remained abstract and remote. The other nevertheless persisted. In lieu of taking the Eucharist and kneeling in pews, it involved stuffing envelopes, knocking on doors, and working the polls. My mother in particular believed deeply in the power of voting. She wasn’t interested in politics as a sport or a game. It was her way—and the way of the many women she worked with as local Democratic Party volunteers—to have a voice. Despite deep introversion, she engaged in protests and ran for an office she couldn’t win, but throughout my childhood and with me in tow, she devoted most of her time and energy to getting people to vote, to use that voice.
By the time I cast my first vote, I had already logged many hours in the project of voting. I knew it was important, but my mother was taking no chances. She sent an absentee ballot application with me to college then and sent me another when I could vote in my first midterms. (Her accompanying advice is a priceless heirloom.)
After my mother retired from politics, a “conspiracy against rights” gained steam on the right, with gerrymandering a primary tool for disempowering voters. Shortly before her death, Mitch McConnell stole a Supreme Court seat, denying voters their choice and ensuring a court bent on rolling back other rights. Trump’s actions before, during, and after January 6, if successful, would have been the one fell swoop. Should he return to power, there is no doubt about the fate of the vote, the right from which so many others spring.
The vote is the legacy of our ancestors, the ones we knew and the ones we didn’t. The vote is the legacy of all Americans, including, of course, Trump’s own voters, though he has deceived many of them into being willing to give it away under the illusion that they would be taking something back. The vote is our inheritance, it is our right, and it is our power. Of all the things Donald Trump has tried and tries to take from us, this is his greatest crime.