Why should they? Senators and US Representatives don’t have the “Natural Born citizen” as a qualification.
Senators:
each senator must be at least 30 years old, 2) must have been a citizen of the United States for at least the past nine years, and 3) must be (at the time of the election) an inhabitant of the State they seek to represent.
US Representatives must:
(1) be at least twenty-five years old, (2) have been a citizen of the United States for the past seven years, and (3) be (at the time of the election) an inhabitant of the state they represent.
Just to get to my original point, the whole Obama BC debacle showed a flaw in the system. The individual Secretaries of State did not do any checking, trusting the individual parties. The Federal Elections Commission just monitors the election. Someone suggested the Electoral College but when I raised that point before the election, the implication was that the EC wasn’t responsible and there would be a legal question from those states that have faithless elector laws. Congress simply counts the votes. A citizen cannot file in court to make a candidate prove that they are a NBC since they do not have standing.
In other words, there is no governmental body (the Republican Party and Democratic Party are private organizations) that check the credentials of Presidential candidates. That was scarier than “Is Obama a Kenyan (or was it Indonesian)” I think part of the problem was IIRC, there was never an official document that said he was born in Honolulu released simply that it was filed in Honolulu. My BC and those of my children all state the city we were born in. When Hawaii and Obama (who couldn’t get it?) refused to publish the long form, some people felt (justifiably IMO) if a presidential candidates CONSTITUTIONAL prerequisites are called into question, they should be addressed and for a few, having the (Democratic) leadership in Hawaii say, we checked it out - trust us wasn’t sufficient.
Bottom line was it appropriate for US citizens to demand proof that Obama (and any presidential candidate) meets the requirements for governor? yes
Did Hawaii do that? Publishing the BC might have been more definative, but we have to accept on faith that they did their due diligence.
Three suits were brought in the Supreme Court seeking injunctions barring Obama from appearing on ballots or requiring him to turn over “additional proof”. SCOTUS tossed them all out. Alan Keyes also brought suit in California, and that was tossed too.
And you do not remember correctly. There are about 30 links in this thread to the short form certificate, which clearly shows that he was born in Hawai’i, not just that a birth certificate was filed there.
Pssst… Even the Great Seal of Hawaii doesn’t spell it with that apostrophe. That was done eons ago to help people remember that the word has three syllables. We know now.
Yet, somehow, nobody ever got around to asking George W. Bush or Robert Dole or George H.W. Bush or Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford or Richard Nixon to produce proof that they were born in the United States. I guess they just looked American.
Anyone and his brother can order a photocopy of the original certificate of birth from the states of Kansas (Dole), California (Nixon), Massachusetts (Bush Sr.). In Connecticut (Bush Jr.), any member of an incorporated genealogical society registered with the state.
Actually, that’s not the real story. Hawaii is sometimes written Hawai’i because the apostrophe stands for the glottal stop that would be there if you were pronouncing the name in Hawaiian rather than English. Since English doesn’t have that sound, it isn’t used in the official name of the state. Because the apostrophe is not part of the official name of the state, it wouldn’t be used on official documents… such as a birth certificate.
But Goldwater’s NBC status was questioned and it was answered by Congress under the political question doctrine.
McCain’s NBC status was questioned and it was answered by Congress under the political question doctrine.
Obama’s NBC status was question and Congress avoided the issue. In my opinion, they should have had a hearing, compelled Hawaii to turn over the long form, say “Yep he was born in Hawaii”, adjourned and have a drink. Any suit filed gets tossed out as “It’s a political question and Congress answered it.”
Have you saved your years-old passports? I haven’t. They come back with a bunch of holes punched in them, in the same envelope as my new one. I shred the pages with my info on them and then throw it away.
Here’s the odd thing about this statement: Congress doesn’t have anything to do with running for president. It only gets involved after the electoral college vote.
John McCain and Barry Goldwater never won a presidential election. Even if congress did have a role in determining whether the person electors voted for was eligible to be president, they would never have run into either.
So, cite please?
Congress counts the electoral votes once the general election has been held, the electoral college has met and voted, and a winner has been determined. (I have argued in other threads (which I can’t immediately find) that this role is ministerial–or is at least limited to checking that the ELECTORS had legitimately voted–it has nothing to do with evaluating who they voted for–and I stand by it.)
Also, before you respond, you should probably understand that the “political question” doctrine is one that applies to COURTS (they use it to refuse to decide “political questions”–questions best determined by the other branches of government). It’s not a way congress “answers” anything.
You don’t have to run to be elected president. (the president is the person who gets the most electoral votes, whether or not he wants to be president).
After the 12th Amendment, electors vote for President and Vice-President separately. So even if the president is ineligible AND a monster eats all the electoral votes for him, the election of his vice-president is not affected. So even if no vote for Obama was valid, Joe Biden would be vice-president.
The constitutional disqualifications are on being “eligible to the office”—i.e. being able to become president. NOT, I say, NOT being eligible to have electors vote for you. So it’s entirely possible for the electors to validly vote for H.M. the Queen. She just couldn’t become president.
This is reinforced by the XXth amendment, which describes what happens if no-one “qualifies for the office” of president. (the vice-president elect serves until a valid prez comes a long). Reading this together, it means that if the president-elect is ineligible, the next president is not the loser of the general election–it’s the vice-president elect.
They now send the old one and new one separately, which is a smart move. If they send them together and the envelope goes missing in the mail, you’re really up the creek!