# Did Barack Obama choose to put his middle name on the ballot? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 15, 2019, 8:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-barack-obama-choose-to-put-his-middle-name-on-the-ballot/840258 "2019-09-15T08:53:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2019, 11:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-barack-obama-choose-to-put-his-middle-name-on-the-ballot/840258/21 "2019-09-16T11:24:31Z")
> [@Lord\_Feldon](#): > > Geeze, that’s weird, you’d think that two old has-beens getting in an irrelevant argument on weekend evening cable would have spawned a bunch of diligent research. Maher’s show has been nominated for a dozen Emmys over the past decade. He regularly gets all number of high profile guests. Trump complains about him on the regular, and FOX News is obsessed with him. If Moore is a has-been, he is one of very recent vintage: in September 2018, his film “Fahrenheit 11/9” got the widest release of any of his films to date, nearly 2,000 screens. His star has certainly cooled due to that film’s underperformance, but I think it’s a bit early to dismiss him as a “has-been”. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2019, 11:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-barack-obama-choose-to-put-his-middle-name-on-the-ballot/840258/22 "2019-09-16T11:43:36Z")
BTW this makes for an interesting experiment, insofar as IMO it shows many people were already of the belief the middle name WAS on the ballot when it wasn’t; while many who had not given it thought, upon hearing the bet will have assumed “must have happened if they are betting on why and not on whether”, and many of them are not bothering to check. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2019, 12:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-barack-obama-choose-to-put-his-middle-name-on-the-ballot/840258/23 "2019-09-16T12:06:29Z")
Yeah, good point. I was willing to believe it was on the ballot, but my assumption was that if so, it was a legal requirement to include the middle name. Presumably the same thing Bill Maher was thinking. Which I must say is a lot less of a brain fart than Michael Moore inventing from whole cloth this story about how he felt when he was in the voting booth and saw the name on the ballot. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2019, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-barack-obama-choose-to-put-his-middle-name-on-the-ballot/840258/24 "2019-09-16T12:14:14Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > BTW this makes for an interesting experiment, insofar as IMO it shows many people were already of the belief the middle name WAS on the ballot when it wasn’t; while many who had not given it thought, upon hearing the bet will have assumed “must have happened if they are betting on why and not on whether”, and many of them are not bothering to check. Yeah, that whole reddit thread is weird. I didn’t read it all, but everyone seems to be going from the assumption that his middle name was on the ballot. I don’t remember this being the case, and, as evidenced by this thread, no evidence has been produced that his middle name was on the presidential ballot, quite the opposite. That said, reading the Deadspin article, the interpretation that Moore won the bet is that the bet was that candidates get to choose what name they put on the ballot. In that case, Moore is correct. It just depends on what the bet is. I’d like to know what ballot Moore supposedly saw his middle name on. ---
**Author:** ![Lightnin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lightnin/32/180_2.png) [@Lightnin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lightnin)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2019, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-barack-obama-choose-to-put-his-middle-name-on-the-ballot/840258/25 "2019-09-16T14:14:55Z")
> [@cochrane](#): > > I couldn’t find any ballots that had Barack Hussein Obama on them. That doesn’t mean it didn’t appear on at least one of them, but Obama did have the choice to leave it off, which seemed to be the crux of the bet. Well, it’s probably because you didn’t use the right search terms. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from the rightwingers on Reddit, it’s that Obama’s name was actually “Barack HUSSEIN Obama”. Apparently, to them, the emphasis matters for some reason. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2019, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-barack-obama-choose-to-put-his-middle-name-on-the-ballot/840258/26 "2019-09-16T15:58:19Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > Obama-Biden appear twice on that ballot; McCain-Palin three times. And these five options all appear before the other five. (I thought the orderings were usually randomized.) Is that ballot typical? Are separate tallies reported for the separate selections? New York is one of the few states where a candidate can run on multiple party lines. Votes for the candidate are listed by party, but the results are then totalled for each candidate. So if you’re running on both the Democratic and Working Families lines, votes for both are combined for the total. Parties are automatically on the ballot if their candidate for governor gets 50K votes and their position is determined by how many votes the party gets. The winning party gets line A, the second gets line B, etc. Parties can also be added for each election, but they have to circulate petitions, and NY petitioning rules are the very definition of picayune. I know of a candidate who lost the chance because he handed in his petitions too early (the law said it would be accepted during particular business hours, and he filed them a half hour before the law specified). The setup can lead to cases like when Mario Cuomo won more votes as a Democrat than George Pataki did as a Republican in 1994, but lost the election because of Pataki’s votes from other parties. Most states don’t allow this sort of grouping. Each party is counted separately, so if you run on more than one line, you split your own vote. No one is dumb enough to do that. The system was set up (most likely) to try to counteract Tammany Hall. Democrats who didn’t like the Tammany could vote for a candidate without voting for a Republican. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2019, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-barack-obama-choose-to-put-his-middle-name-on-the-ballot/840258/27 "2019-09-16T16:35:40Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Yeah, that whole reddit thread is weird. I didn’t read it all, but everyone seems to be going from the assumption that his middle name was on the ballot. I don’t remember this being the case, and, as evidenced by this thread, no evidence has been produced that his middle name was on the presidential ballot, quite the opposite. > > That said, reading the Deadspin article, the interpretation that Moore won the bet is that the bet was that candidates get to choose what name they put on the ballot. In that case, Moore is correct. It just depends on what the bet is. > > I’d like to know what ballot Moore supposedly saw his middle name on. I posted the exact verbatim bet just upthread: post #12. If “Hussein” is not on the ballot, Michael Moore quite clearly loses. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2019, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-barack-obama-choose-to-put-his-middle-name-on-the-ballot/840258/28 "2019-09-18T23:43:59Z")
Oops, post #17. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2019, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-barack-obama-choose-to-put-his-middle-name-on-the-ballot/840258/29 "2019-09-19T15:08:14Z")
> [@Loach](#): > > Hopefully someone can confirm my memory. I thought that battle was fought long before Obama. My memory from childhood was that Jimmy Carter had to fight to keep his name as Jimmy instead of James Earl Carter on all ballots. It was established that candidates could choose how their name appears. It’s widely held that Carter “went to court” to get on the ballot as Jimmy, but I haven’t been able to find any references to those legal proceedings. At some point, Carter changed his legal name to Jimmy and it’s undisputed that he was sworn in as Jimmy. Unfortunately, googling on this topic is not hugely productive because it results in a bunch of hits for a long birther document that discusses Obama’s relationship with Carter. > [@JRDelirious](#): > > As far as I am aware, the practice either by law or regulation is that at lesst part of the name on the ballot and the name the candidate uses in their publicity be the same; at least in the jurisdiction I am most familiar with it is required by law that their legal surname (in this example, Obama) be on the ballot. There is no such regulation, at least not with regard to federal elections. Candidates can ask to be styled however they like. Generally speaking, state election officials have [discretion](https://www.njherald.com/news/20120413/candidates-nickname-nixed-on-primary-ballot) about whether to permit them to go by something other than their legal names. There appears to be [some dispute](https://newjerseyglobe.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Scott-Salmon-to-Tara-Pettoni-Dover-april-2019.pdf) in NJ as to whether that is true. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2019, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-barack-obama-choose-to-put-his-middle-name-on-the-ballot/840258/30 "2019-09-19T16:23:27Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > There is no such regulation, at least not with regard to federal elections. As is often mentioned, it’s really 51 simultaneous state/DC-run elections so the rules are at each state level. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2019, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-barack-obama-choose-to-put-his-middle-name-on-the-ballot/840258/31 "2019-09-19T21:11:30Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > It’s widely held that Carter “went to court” to get on the ballot as Jimmy, but I haven’t been able to find any references to those legal proceedings. It is certainly widely held by me. Since I’m working off of memory and I was 9 at the time I’m hardly a reliable source. Thanks for looking. ---
**Author:** ![jnglmassiv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f07891/32.png) [@jnglmassiv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jnglmassiv)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2019, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-barack-obama-choose-to-put-his-middle-name-on-the-ballot/840258/32 "2019-09-19T23:34:47Z")
> [@Loach](#): > > My memory from childhood was that Jimmy Carter had to fight to keep his name as Jimmy instead of James Earl Carter on all ballots. It was established that candidates could choose how their name appears. Here’s an awesome Antiques Roadshow clip that goes into detail about how this was done at the time: > **[Antiques Roadshow | Appraisal: 1976 Jimmy Carter Presidential Campaign...](https://www.pbs.org/video/antiques-roadshow-appraisal-1976-jimmy-carter-presidential-campaign-affidavit/)** > > Appraisal: Jimmy Carter Affidavit from the 1976 Presidential Campaign. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-barack-obama-choose-to-put-his-middle-name-on-the-ballot/840258.md?page=1)