Qhat is impeachment? Impeachment is a process given to us in the Constitution of the United States in order to remove an elected official. The elected official could be the President, a Congressman, a Supreme Court Justice, or another Federal judge. Impeachment is the process that this person could be removed. To begin the process someone brings a complaint to Congress.
Anyone can bring this complaint. It can be a citizen, it can be another member of Congress, it can be anyone. Then there’s an Inquiry Committee. The Inquiry Committee looks at the evidence brought forth and determines if there’s enough evidence to merit spending time on this. If the inquiry committee says there’s enough evidence, this will then be put to a vote of the House of Representatives.
Each side will get a chance to state their opinions and their ideas about the case. Then the House of Representatives will vote on this. In this part of the process, there only has to be a simple majority to be able to get to the next step. A simple majority means there is one more person on one side than the other. If there’s a simple majority the process moves on to the next step which is a trial in the Senate. At this point, a trial will be held just like a trial in any other court that you might see. If the person being brought forth for impeachment is a higher official, such as the President of the United States, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court may preside over this trial.
During this trial, evidence will be brought forth and then it will be put to a vote. In this case, the vote has to have a supermajority, which means it has to have a two-thirds vote in the Senate. That means that 67 out of the 100 members of the Senate have to vote for impeachment. If this happens, the person will be removed from their office and prohibited from holding office again. I want to mention that if at any point in this process the vote does not pass, then the person being impeached continues in his or her position.
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