By Dr. Scott Bellows

Every four years in honor of our American and African heritage as an institution, USIU-Africa hosts an open colloquium that coincides with the United States presidential election. In this American election cycle, the colloquium was held on October 29th. Over 100 undergraduate and graduate students, alumni, and community members participated in the live Zoom session. Topics covered included the American presidential electoral process including the electoral college by Mr. Devin Glick (US Embassy in Nairobi), history of black citizens in American elections by Professor Cassandra Veney (an American citizen and Chair of the International Relations Department at USIU-Africa), and Observations on the US Election by a member of the New African Diaspora by Professor Paul Zeleza (a Malawi and American citizen and Vice Chancellor of USIU-Africa).

Following the three panelists' lectures, USIU-Africa's Scott Bellows took participants through his own American absentee ballot highlighting various features and issues to be voten on. Students found it particularly humorous that celebrity singer Kanye West was listed vying on the ballot and had chosen his political affiliation as the "Birthday Party". In the mock vote through Zoom's polling feature, Democratic Party presidential candidate Joe Biden and his running mate vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris won 76% of the USIU-Africa vote with Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump and his running mate vice presidential candidate Mike Pence garnering the remaining 24%.

The absentee ballot contained a variety of other elected official choices for the Senate, House of Representatives, state officials, county officials, city officials including police officials, tax measures as to whether citizens accepted to raise their local tax rates, as well as constitutional changes to their state's constitution, and various county and city propositions to change local laws or practices. One constitutional change included whether to remove abortion language from the state's constitution as an anti-abortion statement. The USIU-Africa community mock voted 54% to 46% in favor of siding with the anti-abortion movement and removing the abortion constitutional language. A local city proposition would allow that particular city to allow gambling as a way to generate tax revenue for the city. The USIU-Africa community mock voted in an even tie of 50% on both sides as to whether to allow the city to license local gambling.

Previous winners of campus US presidential mock balloting at USIU-Africa include President Barack Obama over Governor Mitt Romney in 2012 and Secretary Hillary Clinton over President Donald Trump in 2016. The next scheduled US presidential election colloquium and mock vote will take place at USIU-Africa in October 2024. The Business Daily newspaper was the media partner for the colloquium.