You are right of course. The literacy tests they used in the south were applied equally to blacks and whites alike. Juries never convict black people using different criteria than they do for white people and judges do not impose longer sentences.
Imagine that the Arizona SoS says Obama is not eligible and the state AG and the State Supreme back him up. Obama takes it to the US SC where one of two thongs happen: the SC says it does not have jurisdiction over who a state puts on its ballot, or it rules in favor of Obama and we now have an example of the Federal govt, run by a black man, forcing a state to put a black man on the ballot. That’ll go over well.
There is a case in Oregon where a couple had a child at a military base overseas. The base was closed soon after and the records were lost. The child now has no proof of US citizenship and has been having trouble getting a passport.
Couldn’t find a link to that case, but look at these.
But that’s just it; nowhere have I read anything that the proposed legislation would set down on paper any set of standards. As far as I can tell, it simply gives each state’s SoS carte blanche authority to decide whether he or she thinks the presented proof of citizenship is adequate or not.
One problem with any proposed law is, the democratic and republican candidates are not actually officially known until the party conventions, in August. Any law would have to factor this in.
I think that the challenge to the Constituionality might be that the law is too vague in that it doesn’t describe what the Secretary of State would use to consider the validity of a candidates nationality.
Actually that’s a good example of what I was saying. The law was written “neutrally” - everyone whose grandfather hadn’t been a registered voter had to take a literacy test in order to register. So while it was neutral in theory, it actually worked against blacks in practice.
So using this example, somebody invent a similar procedure that would prevent Obama from being a candidate while allowing Palin or some other Republican to be able to pass. And it has to pass a reasonable test of constitutionality - so nothing like a “No Hawaiians” rule.
As for those of you who are saying that “they” will just do whatever they want, you’re approaching crazyland. You’re sounding like those people who claimed that Bush was going to cancel the election and declare himself President-for-Life. People may write the laws to suit their purposes and bend them when they can get away with it but our government still remains within the rule of law. If there was some secret conservative illuminati council that had the power to just do whatever it wanted, Obama would never have been elected in the first place.
That would not be enough for Senator John McCain. In his case, you’d need evidence that at least one of his parents was a U.S. citizen, and had resided in the United States for a sufficient amount of time before his birth. So evidence might include his mother’s birth certificate, or his father’s birth certificate together with his parents’ marriage certificate.
Don’t candidates register in New Hampshire or something before the primary process starts? Just have them show a passport or birth certificate at the time and trust some clerk to know how to wield a rubber stamp.
Furthermore, that the only avenue of appeal is to the Governor and that the state courts have no jurisdiction over the matter. I’m not familiar with Arizona’s constitution, but there are plenty of areas in which the legislature can preclude the courts from judicial intervention. Since this would be an inherently political question, strong arguments could be made that courts–state and Federal–should not and cannot exercise their authority.
Of course, if you have enough activist judges on the court that might not matter. (For example, look at what the activist judges did in Bush v. Gore). Just because you claim to vest sole authority in the SoS does not mean that a court can’t inject itself into the process.
I think this is shitty political move. While it’s Constitutionally permissible for a state to set requirements for appearance on the ballot, this is disturbingly targeted. Its consequences could be Constitutionally devastating.
Thank you, I was going to ask him if he had read the rest of my message.
I think the disconnect is, you think that just because the SoS of Arizona says yes, he has a birth certificate, the whole thing will blow over. If that were the case, it would have blown over already.
If the Arizona law is constitutional (which I have no opinion on, I am not a constitutional scholar) then I have no doubt that Obama will show the same copy of his birth certificate to the SoS and it will be accepted. And the birthers will still not accept that he is a US citizen. It is not about proof or reality to them. They are no more rational about it than an evangelical Christian who believes in creationism.
Their newest martyr is the LTC that is being court martialed for refusing to deploy to Iraq, because he supposedly does not believe that Obama is an American. (My first question to him would be, in the 15 months that Obama has been President, have you obeyed any other orders from superiors? If so, what is so special about these orders that suddenly you think they are illegal? Of course, I am not a lawyer. The important thing is he gets convicted and punished.) This guy is throwing away almost 2 decades of service, because he is apparently buying into a completely irrational belief. Why do you think any of the others that share that belief will react any differently?
Interesting. I was born overseas while dad was in the Air Force (both of my parents were and are US citizens). To get a replacement copy of my birth certificate I just write to the US State Department.
There are family stories about the paperwork my folks had to fill out after my birth, and the signature on the original form is 2-3 months after I was born - but it is all recorded through the State Dept.
That seems to me to be a particularly stupid idea. For a start, a state governor is almost always identified with one of the major political parties, and hence would appear to be inherently biased against candidates from other parties. In the second case, it is possible that the Governor herself or himself might be a candidate in the presidential election, and hence have to rule on their own eligibility, or the eligibility of rival candidates.
I don’t even see it is a “inherently political question” – just a simple question of constitutional interpretation, and applying the words of the constitution to particular candidates. The High Court of Australia seemed to have no trouble in settling a question about the citizenship of a candidate for political office in Sue v. Hill. (In that case, the question was the meaning of “a foreign power” in s. 44 of the Australian Constitution: the court held that the United Kingdom was a “foreign power”, and hence that a dual U.K.-Australian citizen could not be a member of the Australian Senate.)