By Allison G. S. Knox
Contributor
Presidential inaugurations are special events and an important part of American history. Inaugurations usher in a new administration and create ample opportunities for policy changes. These ceremonies are often emotionally charged events because they represent the end of a long campaign and election process..
Unfortunately, several recent events created an environment in which a peaceful transition to a new president was threatened by the possibility of violence.
Former President Trump was blamed for inciting a mob that ended in an insurrection at the United States Capitol on January 6. Because of the events leading up to the inauguration, the National Guard was called in to maintain the peace in Washington, D.C. Several social media memes circulated the question if the National Guard was needed in Washington, was it truly a fair election?
Fair elections are a hallmark of the United States. Elections were essentially conceived with the idea that the American people would choose their elected officials in fair and open voting.
However, the notion of a fair election was questioned when Trump refused to concede the election to Joe Biden. Former Congressman Christopher Shays argued in a recent article [HD1] in the Stamford Advocate that even questioning whether an election is fair creates an environment that could be dangerous to a democracy and, as such, is dangerous to the country
If we think about what fair elections refer to, then we begin to understand that the inauguration is important to protect.
If we put the issues of the election aside and focus on the offices that an election fills, we realize that the National Guard isn’t really protecting the election, but rather the people who will fill those offices. The peaceful transition of power is focused on one elected official leaving office and the next elected official taking over. We can certainly add political agendas and questions of unfair elections, but doing so, as Shays argues, the questions create ambiguity and concern that become extremely detrimental to the overall structure of democracy and the election process.
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