By Ada Fisher

By law the administration of Donald John Trump will end officially on Jan. 6 when the Electoral College presents its votes to Congress for Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. as the 46th president of the United States.

This also stamps Kamala Devi Harris for the next vice president during Biden’s term. Now is the appropriate official time for concessions to be made following the constitutional process established for this democratic republic.

Those who want to castigate President Trump and Republicans for not conceding or those who want to squash the right to protest or assemble for their own cause miss important constitutional lessons and rights given in this nation’s formation. Just as there has been some discomfort with the Trump brigades fanning their positions to MAGA (Make America Great Again) perceived by some as racist, the demonstrations of the Black Lives Matter protests, which have been allowed and sanctioned by others with the blessings of media and Democratic Party positions, are similarly seen. Everything done in the search for freedom for individuals is inherently not racist.

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution was designed to prevent the government from making laws which regulate an establishment of religion or that would prohibit the free exercise of religion or abridge the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, the freedom of assembly or the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. This is often interpreted as a freedom of association giving individuals or a collection of people to unite to collectively express, promote, pursue and defend their ideas. The Declaration of Independence says that we not only have these rights but we also have the duty to alter or abolish any government that does not secure our unalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

It would be a grievous error for the vile rhetoric hurdled at Republicans or those who supported President Trump to be continued. For in so doing, over 70 million USA voters are being disenfranchised. Many of the reasons for Trumps support are being misread. In leaning on Obama operatives to fill his cabinet or re-embracing those previously held positions, Biden is setting us up for further divisions. Trump’s loss reflected, in large measure, his inability to shut up when he had his point made and a colossal failure of Republican messaging when they had the right issues but a wrong inflection.

More folks are unwittingly trying to second guess themselves, raising the spectra of possibilities that there may be a grain of truth to some of Trump’s misgivings about the elections. There is no doubt there were ballots which weren’t counted, with a distinct possibility that an occasional vote was illegal for a myriad of reasons. The question is whether there are enough such votes to change the outcome of the election if awarded to either Trump or to Biden. To change the course of the 2020 presidential election, incontrovertible proof of election fraud must be offered. Just saying it is so doesn’t make it so.

The case has been made for not calling the election before all votes are counted. In the name of democracy, only certified votes by the Electoral College should constitute grounds for calling the presidential election.

Now that vaccines are on their way to quarters far and near, will the Trump administration get any credit for the full-speed assault on COVID-19, whose etiology was not his fault. If all that people say should have been done was done, there is no certainty that this pandemic’s outcome would have been different.

Salisbury’s Ada Fisher is a licensed teacher, retired physician, former school board member and former N.C. Republican national committeewoman.