Arizona birther bill passedFollow

Before reading further, you don't vote in a national election. The only actual national election is the vote cast by the Electoral College. When you vote for Senator or Representative, you are voting within your district or state to send a representative of your district or state to Congress. When you vote for president, you're voting within your state to elect Electoral College representative from your state who will then vote for President.

The states decide the rules for their elections (within certain restrictions of course). They absolutely can set eligibility requirements for a name to appear on the ballot. And given that what they're asking is pretty easily within the bounds of the requirement for the office itself, it's unlikely that this requirement can be successfully challenged (but I'm sure that wont stop some from trying).

Personally, I think it's a great idea. More states should follow suite. Since the federal government has shown no interest in closing this potential loophole, the states absolutely can and should step up to the plate and do it themselves.


But to respond more directly to your post. This doesn't affect voters outside of Arizona. What it means is that any candidate for president who hasn't provided those credentials cannot appear on the Arizona ballot (and presumably would also be barred from write-in as well). Meaning that if (for example) Obama doesn't provide this information to Arizona he automatically can't get any EC votes from that state. The sticky point is that as I pointed out earlier, you don't vote for the candidate. You vote for an EC member from that candidates party. All the Dems would have to do to circumvent this would be to put "Democratic Party Candidate" on their application and tell people to vote for the Democratic party candidate. The Arizona law presumably can't bar the Electoral College from voting for whomever they wish, so there is a loophole there I believe.


EDIT: Having thought about it a bit more (and read through the rest of the posts), they'd have to come up with an actual person to put on the ballot (since that person would have to present a birth certificate as well). As someone pointed out earlier, they could just put a proxy in place and have people vote for that person. The question is how much this would be seen as just more ridiculous twisting of the rules to avoid presenting a full legal document which most people would assume should be required as proof anyway.

It's a good approach because it doesn't specifically say "We're looking at you Obama!", but if every other candidate on the ballot in AZ (hah! Except maybe one other IIRC) files a full complete form birth certificate and appears by name there, and Obama doesn't, but he instead has some other person stand in for him, a whole lot of people will start to wonder wtf is up with that.

Edited, Apr 15th 2011 2:33pm by gbaji

Is that honestly what you got out of that? Because that's a bit insane. I'm not making any judgment about the process at all. I'm just clarifying how the process works in the context of the topic of this thread.

Eh, can't win them all.

The crazier the conspiracy, the more genius Obama appears.

Pass muster, you yutz.

<3



Edited, Apr 15th 2011 4:37pm by Samira

I find that a little hard to believe.

This is exactly why we need time travel...

We only know where we are told we were born...my parents are liberal (ie. liars) and documents can be forged.

That's one of my top four favorite Indiana Jones movies!

I already received my taxes..... I have no children.

China just banned time travel, and if they control the entire world in the future, then no time travel would exist. Therefore there would be no way to come back from the future to change the banning of time travel by china, or preventing them from taking over the world, and preventing time travel.

There is that pesky Constitution though.



Except for that time where he lived until the age of 10 in Indonesia of course. But other than that, he was raised as a US citizen and spent most of his life here. How much of your cultural and social identity had you formed by age 10? A good amount, right? Obviously, this doesn't disqualify him legally, but your statement isn't really accurate.




But it's not how you consider yourself. If that turned out to be true, you would legally not be a US citizen. And that *does* kinda matter.


And at the risk of spinning this off on another tangent, the purpose of that restriction really is to ensure that the person holding the office of President does not have conflicted loyalties. The assumption being that someone born in the US and raised by US parents would be most likely to hold strictly US loyalties. I would assume that had Obama been raised in Hawaii his entire life and not lived for more than half of his first 10 years on foreign soil being raised by a foreign stepfather, nobody would care that much about the actual birth documentation. But the combination of someone who lived a large portion of his formative years on foreign soil and any question at all about his birth certificate lends more people to want to take a closer look. He clearly doesn't match the spirit of the law as written, but it's not that spirit we apply. So any possibility that he also doesn't meet the letter of the law is going to be examined and explored.


And despite some craziness over this issue (on both sides), the request for examination of the full documents is not really unreasonable. Not for such an important position in our government. And kudos to Az for finally doing the right thing. I mean, it would have been nice for Obama to do the right thing three years ago, but he chose to make political hay out of it instead, so it falls to someone else to take action. And this action by Az is exactly the right thing to do. The courts have failed us on this, so it's time for someone to pass a law.

Edited, Apr 15th 2011 6:19pm by gbaji