Thread: Natural-born mess: What would it take to kick Ted Cruz off the ballot?

Natural-born mess: What would it take to kick Ted Cruz off the ballot?

By Derek Muller
January 15, 2016


Senator Ted Cruz gestures toward rival candidate Donald Trump (L) as he speaks at the Fox Business Network Republican presidential candidates debate in North Charleston, South Carolina, January 14, 2016. REUTERS/Chris Keane

Donald Trump has resuscitated questions regarding Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s eligibility to serve as president of the United States. Cruz was born in Canada to a Cuban father and an American mother. A recent Trump tweet succinctly pressed the issue: “Sadly, there is no way that Ted Cruz can continue running in the Republican primary unless he can erase doubt on eligibility. Dems will sue.”

The U.S. Constitution requires that the president be a “natural-born citizen” of the United States. Though many contend that being born to an American mother is sufficient, others say only those born on U.S. soil are eligible.

What would a legal challenge to Cruz’s eligibility look like? It’s far more complicated than you might think because it depends on how each state handles his access to the ballot. New Hampshire’s Ballot Law Commission, for example, has already said that Cruz is eligible — at least until a court says otherwise.

Scenario A: Could someone sue to try to keep Cruz off the ballot? Such challenges are unlikely to succeed. A plaintiff must have standing to sue and must show a specific injury rather than a generalized grievance. Voters can’t just complain that someone, somewhere is violating a law — they have to identify an actual harm. Most challenges to candidates’ eligibility end here. Federal courts, for example, threw out dozens of birther challenges to Barack Obama’s eligibility in 2008 and 2012 because voters sued and failed to identify a concrete injury. So, the courts never had to rule that Obama was actually born in Hawaii.

Donald Trump (L) and Senator Ted Cruz speak simultaneously at the Fox Business Network Republican presidential candidates debate in North Charleston, South Carolina, January 14, 2016. REUTERS/Randall Hill

State courts are not bound by the federal standards and have heard challenges from such voters. But these claims often fail because states are not required to look at a candidate’s qualifications. New Hampshire is an outlier:

Many states don’t look at whether a candidate is eligible to be president before placing him or her on the ballot.

They accept the paperwork — and happily accept the filing fee — then list the candidate on the ballot. Socialist Workers Party candidate Róger Calero, for example, appeared on several ballots around the country in 2004 and again in 2008 — despite being a Nicaraguan citizen.

Other challenges fail because courts defer to the political process. In a presidential election, one court concluded in a challenge to Obama’s eligibility, it is first left to presidential electors to determine eligibility, and then to Congress when it counts the votes.

In addition, candidates may lose elections, which would negate any need for a court to interfere.

Some courts, reluctant to intervene, move particularly slowly and let the election process work itself out.

Scenario B: But what if a state kept Cruz off the primary ballot? What if an election official decided that state law permitted only natural-born citizens to appear on the ballot and concluded that Cruz was ineligible, and thus removed him from the ballot? Or what if a state secretary of state decided to reject votes cast for Cruz in a primary election? Cruz would presumably sue — and he would certainly have standing.

A court may choose to drag its feet and hope that the political process would work itself out. Perhaps, Cruz would drop out of the race before a court reached a decision. But denying voters the chance to vote for an eligible candidate, or refusing to count ballots cast for a candidate, would be a serious harm, and a court would likely weigh in.

A court might simply avoid the harder issue of defining “natural-born citizen” and find reasons to allow him on the ballot. It might conclude that no state law authorizes an election official to scrutinize a candidate’s eligibility, as occurred in some challenges to Obama’s eligibility. Or a court might conclude that a political primary is not binding on the Republican National Convention — since a brokered convention could sort out any prospective nominees’ eligibility questions. A court might also say that this is simply a primary race, not the presidential election itself. So any decisions about his eligibility would be premature.

Accordingly, even if a state left Cruz off the ballot, there are many possible avenues by which a court might order him back on the ballot without addressing whether or not he is a natural-born citizen.

Scenario C: But what if a court does weigh in on Cruz’s eligibility? Unlikely as it might seem, given the many contingencies outlined above, it remains a distinct possibility with a less-than-certain outcome.

Two major positions stand out in the effort to define “natural-born citizen.” Some have argued that the term can only mean a person born within the United States.

They cite early British practice before the American Revolution as the principle codified in the text of the Constitution.

Others — more persuasively, in my view — argue that Congress, like the British parliament at the time of the founding fathers, has the power to define who is a natural- born citizen at birth. British and early U.S. practices help demonstrate this understanding.

In 1952, Congress enacted a law granting citizenship to anyone born to an American mother who met a few conditions of domicile in the United States. Cruz is a citizen under that law. And whether he is natural-born turns on whether Congress has the power to declare him natural-born.

How a court resolves this debate is highly uncertain. As courts have generally shied away from resolving disputes about candidate qualifications, judicial involvement here would be truly unprecedented.

Scenario D: Even after all this, there remains one still more potential outcome: a brokered convention. Trump, or some other candidate, might choose to challenge Cruz’s eligibility at the Republican National Convention.

Challenges to delegates pledged to support Cruz would claim that such delegates could not vote for an unqualified candidate. And the Republican National Committee would have to sift through these contests, potentially leading to a brokered convention in which no single candidate earned a majority of the delegates’ votes on the first ballot.

That could lead to far greater uncertainty: Who in the party would be able to broker a deal about who should be the Republican nominee? There would also likely be a fresh round of debates on the term “natural-born citizen.”

This scenario would be extraordinarily unlikely. But in a high-profile contest between Trump and Cruz, perhaps nothing should surprise us.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/w...spute-36695435

WAY BACK when I went to school......Natural Born Citizen meant Born to TWO citizen parents!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rubio is an ANCHOR BABY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ZERO citizen parents!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Originally Posted by grandmasmad

WAY BACK when I went to school......Natural Born Citizen meant Born to TWO citizen parents!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! . . .

And slavery used to be legal
and women voting used to be illegal.
But times change.

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

And slavery used to be legal
and women voting used to be illegal.
But time change.

And it was the moral cause of citizenship that was the basic argument against both slavery and for the emancipation of women.

We fought for for citizenship in the American Revolution and rot like Cruz are a conspiracy against it.

Voters can’t just complain that someone, somewhere is violating a law — they have to identify an actual harm. Most challenges to candidates’ eligibility end here. Federal courts, for example, threw out dozens of birther challenges to Barack Obama’s eligibility in 2008 and 2012 because voters sued and failed to identify a concrete injury. So, the courts never had to rule that Obama was actually born in Hawaii.

What is the sense in having a citizenship rule if it cannot be challenged?

Interesting story on the actual numbers on O's so called birth certificate. Read another story he has a dead man's SS # too.

Hawaii officials fingered for ‘hiding’ Obama’s birth records

posted November 14, 2012 by Ask Marion

Cold Case Posse boss fingers Hawaii officials

Sworn statement details ‘elaborate non-cooperation’ on Obama probe

WND (by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley):

An angry statement just sworn by the lead investigator of a team assigned to review Barack Obama’s birth certificate says Hawaii officials – who are Democrats like Obama – are using “elaborate non-cooperation” to conceal birth records from law enforcement and the public.

The sworn affidavit comes from Cold Case Posse lead Mike Zullo just a week after the publication of a sworn mathematical analysis demonstrating the near-zero probability that the White House “birth certificate” is genuine.

Also, a math professor from Louisiana State University, Charles Delzell, has confirmed and endorsed the mathematical conclusions in yet another sworn statement.

Zullo, a seasoned sleuth who heads the team deputized by Joe Arpaio, recently re-elected sheriff of Maricopa County, Ariz., fingers Hawaii’s governor, deputy attorney general and health department chiefs as obstructing justice.

Zullo’s affidavit charges these officials are “hiding” original birth records, thwarting the posse’s hunt for those who forged the document at the White House website.

His detailed catalog of Hawaii’s misfeasance is shocking.

After two visits to the islands in the past six months, he has “chronicled a series of inconsistent and misleading representations” that various officials of the government of Hawaii have made since he was assigned to the case when 250 voters petitioned their sheriff to investigate the dodgy document more than a year ago.

Those statements have come since 2007 and are on the question of what original birth records, if any, are held by the Hawaii Department of Health.

The department, Zullo said, “has engaged in what the sheriff’s investigators believe is a systematic effort to hide from law enforcement and the public whatever original 1961 birth records the Hawaii Department of Health may have in its possession.”

Officials “changed their policies and procedures in a manner calculated to hinder our law-enforcement investigation,” he continued.

Alvin Onaka, Hawaii’s chief birth registrar, refused to talk to Zullo.

“Much to our amazement we were informed that Mr. Onaka does not speak to the public.”

Jill Nagamine, Hawaii’s deputy attorney general, spoke to Zullo at his insistence but “refused to verify the authenticity” of the birth certificate released to the American public on the government’s whitehouse.gov site.

Nagamine “would not provide us with any confirmation that the document was created by the Hawaii Department of Health.”

She accused Zullo of “trying to get a verification of a birth record without legal authority.”

Yet the duly deputized investigators had presented their credentials to police in Honolulu before interviewing her.

She “constantly evaded answering every question about the legitimacy of the document.”

Zullo went to the Kapiolani Hospital, where the forgery says Obama was born. He asked to see the publicly available birth records for 1961, the alleged year of his birth. The hospital “less than politely refused.”

Management failed even to confirm Obama had been born there, “nor did they confirm that they were in possession of his birth records.”

In 2008, Dr. Chiyome Fukino, the Health Department’s director, said she had “personally seen and verified that the Hawaii State Department of Health has Sen. Obama’s original birth certificate on record.”

Eight months later she changed her statement. She dropped all mention of seeing the “original birth certificate.”

Instead, she said she had seen “the original vital records verifying Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American.”

In 1961, state law permitted Hawaiian parents of children born anywhere in the world to register them as Hawaiian-born, a legalized backdoor to U.S. citizenship. Article II of the U.S. Constitution insists that only a “natural-born citizen” can serve as president.

At that time, Hawaii’s local newspapers filled space by printing birth announcements from the archive, including Hawaiian birth certificates of foreign-born children.

So the announcement of Obama’s birth in two newspapers is not evidence he was born in Hawaii.

Neil Abercrombie, Hawaii’s governor, said he was present at Obama’s birth. Then he changed his story. He “acknowledged that he did not see Obama’s parents with their newborn son at any hospital.”

Abercrombie then said he remembered seeing Obama as a child with his parents at social events.

Zullo writes: “There is no evidence to support that claim. No doctor or nurse who attended his birth has come forward to say so.”

Abercrombie told a Honolulu newspaper he would search for definitive records to prove Obama was born in Hawaii.

He said: “The continuing eligibility controversy could hurt the president’s chances of re-election in 2012.” The issue would raise “political implications … that we simply cannot have.”

Yet Abercrombie never subsequently said he had seen Obama’s original long-form birth certificate. He said no more than that he had identified “an unspecified listing or notation of Obama’s birth that someone had made in the state archives.”

Zullo adds: “If such a document had existed, Abercrombie would have had it within minutes of his request.”

He continues: “To date the purported undisclosed birth record in the state archives that Abercrombie has claimed to have discovered and has described as being ‘actually written’ has never been made public.

“Being located in the state archives, this document should be available for inspection by the general public without restraint.”
Fukino told CNN in 2011 that she had gone into the Health Department’s vault, where she had inspected Obama’s original birth certificate.

Zullo comments: “Inferentially, it should have been that easy for Gov. Abercrombie to locate it as well.”

Nagamine said: “Accessing the original birth records was difficult and expensive.”

Yet Fukino had told CNN “she simply went to the vault and inspected Obama’s original birth certificate.”
Zullo’s affidavit shows a picture of Onaka lifting out a volume of 1973 birth certificates from the archive shelves, showing that consulting the records is no harder than looking up a book in a library.

On Zullo’s second visit to Hawaii, he met Duncan Sunahara, who had been refused a certified copy of a long-form birth certificate for his sister, Virginia.

Shortly after her birth, she had died of breathing complications the day of Obama’s birth.

Zullo comments: “The Cold Case Posse is compelled to consider the question why this little girl’s 1961 long-form birth certificate was so disconcerting to the Hawaii Department of Health that it did not wish to issue a copy to Mr. Sunahara upon request.”

Hawaii took great care to number certificates sequentially. Officials stacked them in monthly batches by date and time of birth before numbering each in turn with an automatically incremented stamp.

Obama, born at 7:24 p.m. Aug. 4, 1961, now has No. 10641 on his birth certificate.

Virginia Sunahara, born almost two hours later, now has No. 11080. Yet on average only two babies an hour were born in Hawaii that year. Her number should have been no more than 10650. It is too big by well over 400.

Also, twins born the following day were given numbers earlier than Obama’s current number: No. 10637 and No. 10638.

Investigators suspect Obama’s number was not assigned in 1961 but may have been taken from Sunahara’s birth certificate.

When Sunahara first asked for a certified copy of his sister’s birth certificate last year, he did not get it, though Hawaiian law says he should get a full certificate if he asks for it.

He was given a short-form computer abstract. The posse suspects that was when officials altered Virginia Sunahara’s computerized record to give it an impossibly high number.

Zullo also mentions evidence that the computerized index of birth records did not contain Obama’s name when a Hawaiian citizen first consulted it, but the name had been added when he looked again two weeks later.

The short-form abstract of Obama’s birth record had been published in 2008. At first, the number had been blacked out, though there was no legitimate reason why. Shortly afterward an image was published with the number 10641 visible.

So, if the posse is right to suspect the Health Department had used Virginia Sunahara’s number when it issued Obama’s short-form abstract in 2008, it had to alter her record to give her a different number altogether – “a possibility,” says Zullo, “that the investigators are constrained to bear in mind.”

The posse has reported to the sheriff that two crimes have been committed: first, fraudulently creating a forgery that the White House had characterized, knowingly or unknowingly, as an officially produced governmental birth record; and secondly, fraudulently presenting to the residents of Maricopa County and to the American public at large a forgery that the White House had represented as “proof positive” of Obama’s authentic 1961 Hawaiian long-form birth certificate.

Zullo concludes that the whole question could be settled quickly and decisively if Hawaii would let his forensic specialists examine Obama’s original birth certificate and hospital birth record.


https://askmarion.wordpress.com/2012...birth-records/

Originally Posted by artist

. . . Interesting story on the actual numbers on O's so called birth certificate. . .

The most complete collection of birther articles in the world, here at ALIPAC:

Barack Obama's citizenship questioned

Started by MinutemanCDC_SC, 11-05-2008 09:33 AM 123...144

• Replies: 5,722
• Views: 599,569

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

And slavery used to be legal
and women voting used to be illegal.
But times change.

The Constitution was changed in both instances with Amendments to the US Constitution to prevent state sanctioned slavery and state bans on women voting.

The Constitution has never been changed regarding "natural born citizen" clause. It still is what it is. Born in the US to 2 US citizens. With so many natural born citizens running for President, why do people want to vote for someone who isn't one? That's hard for me to understand on the face of it, before you even look at the candidate. Then when you look at Cruz and Rubio, what do you have?

Not much. Do they stand up for American Workers? Not when it mattered. Do they stand up against terrorism? Not here, our country's full of them. Do they understand trade and how to fix our economy? Nope. Do they want to actually solve the illegal immigration problem? Nope. Do they bring experience or knowlege in management, business, economy, fiscal affairs? Not a drop.

http://www.alipac.us/f9/neither-cruz...52/index2.html

U.S. Supreme Court declines to hear Ted Cruz's 'birther' case