Currently, the legislatures in several states have introduced “birther bills” aimed at ensuring only Constitutionally qualified Presidential and (in some - but not all - state) Vice Presidential candidates are included on their ballots. There is nothing wrong with this idea per se. In fact, I think it would be a good idea to require candidates to provide evidence that they meet the requirements established by the Constitution. The problem with these bills are that in general, they either misstate what those qualifications are, require documentation that not all states - sometimes including the state contemplating the bill itself provides - and in at least one case, the law would only apply to primary elections, which the state (Maine) doesn’t have - they use caucuses! There’s an excellent series of threads on the various bills at the Fogbow, that looks at what’s being proposed, what the various problems are with them, and suggestions on making them better. One member, Welsh Dragon, has also put together a summary of the various bills, which I am embedding below. These bills have many problems, starting with the requirement that the candidate present his or her original long-form birth certificate to the Secretary of State. This certificate would have to include the names and signature of the doctor as well as the name of the hospital, the parents and any witnesses. Of course, there exists only one original certificate for each person. For this reason, no state allows anyone to have the original, as they would then no longer have ANY record of that person’s birth. Additionally, since there is only one original certificate, if more than one state were to demand it, how would the candidate decide which state gets it? Would the different states each take a look at it and pass it on to the next? Another issue is that many states no longer make copies of long-form certificates available. Most have switched to a short-form certificate that generally lists the child’s name, the city and state where the child was born, the time of birth and the names of the child’s parents (though apparently some states don’t even include that.) Very few include information on the hospital or doctor who was in attendance. These are called short-form birth certificates, certifications of live birth or certificates of live birth (both abbreviated COLB.) On top of that, what happens to children who weren’t born in a hospital? Even if the long-form certificate were available, if the child was NOT born in a hospital with a doctor in attendance, then that information would not be available, and the “birther bill” law would not allow the state to include the candidate on the ballot. Can you imagine how many children are born in the US each day who aren’t born in hospitals? Under some of these laws, none of them could grow up to be President. To add to the idiocy, many of the states pondering such laws are among those who only offer the short-form or COLB documents, meaning that no one from that state could qualify to be on that’s states ballot! The pièce de résistance is that any of these laws that would involve rejecting the official document provided as proof of birth from another state would violate the Full Faith and Credit Clause in the Constitution. That’s right. These laws, as many of them are written, are flat-out unconstitutional. Some of these bills also include clauses requiring that the Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates provide proof that their parents were both American citizens at the time of the child’s birth and an affidavit from the candidate stating he has never held or was eligible for dual citizenship. Of course, neither of these are actually requirements to be President. The only requirements are that the person is over 35 years old, has resided in the US for 14 years (and, unlike some of these bills seems to indicate, it’s not 14 consecutive years, just 14 years total) and is a natural-born Citizen. Some birthers will argue that in order to be a natural-born citizen, one must be born to two citizen parents and have never held (or been eligible for) dual citizenship, neither of which is true. The Constitution only has two kinds of citizenship - natural-born and naturalized. Naturalized citizens have to go through a process to obtain their citizenship, whereas natural-born citizens are citizens automatically. Several court cases have established that anyone born within the US is automatically an American citizen, regardless of the citizenship status of their parents. It’s one of the reasons why anti-immigration politicians are trying to revoke birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants. As for the issue of dual citizenship, it has no effect on whether someone is a natural-born citizen or not. All the US cares about is someone’s citizenship status under American law. Our laws do not care who else might claim you as a citizen, and with very good reason. Imagine that Moammar Gadhafi (to pick a random leader who might do something crazy) were to decide he didn’t want to see Sarah Palin become the President of the United States, so he declares her a Libyan citizen, making her a dual US/Libyan citizen. Would that stop her from running for President? According to some of these bills, it just might, as she would be unable to swear that she had never held dual citizenship, but in reality, it wouldn’t have any effect at all on her eligibility, because the US is only concerned with who our laws deem to be a citizen. Likewise, it doesn’t matter if the UK, Kenya or Mars considered Obama to be a dual citizen. As far as the US is concerned, he is a US citizen, and that’s all that matters. There are other issues in these bills as well, but the point is that these bills are examples of what happens when politicians decide to pander to extreme elements in their base and don’t thoroughly think through what effects these laws would have or if the even make sense. Politicians who propose laws that are so badly flawed have no business being in politics. Hopefully, others in the state legislatures will realize just how bad these proposed laws are and they will fail to pass. As I noted above, though, I have no problem if a state wants to adopt a reasonable law ensuring that candidates are qualified for the offices they are attempting to win. Asking for a certified copy of the candidates birth certificate to be sent to them from the issuing state would be a perfectly reasonable - and Constitutional - move. Asking for a history of residences to verify that a candidate has lived in the United States for at least 14 years total is equally reasonable. What’s not reasonable is expecting candidates to produce documents no one aside from a state’s vital records office has access to, containing information that not every state includes, violating the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution, and barring anyone from Presidential candidacy who didn’t have the good fortune to actually be born in a hospital with doctors present. Birther Bills

Related articles

• Birther Bills Introduced in 10 States (newser.com)
• Birther bills introduced in at least ten states (americablog.com)
• Birther debate alive across U.S. (politico.com)
• Nebraska Hops On The Birther Bandwagon (huffingtonpost.com)
• Birther nonsense spreading in state capitals (washingtonmonthly.com)
• Ten States Have Birther Legislation (alan.com)