Posted on 02/12/2011 8:34:33 AM PST by Uncle Sham
It seems that we might have been directing our efforts to determine whether or not this nation has a legally serving President at the wrong target. Congress should not be left out of the debate as though they where not in some way involved in answering this question. They are very much involved and deserve our scrutiny. Congress is COMMANDED by the U.S. Constitution to verify eligibility of a President-elect or name a replacement. Here is the case.
First off, what is a “President elect” in the full legal sense of the description? Since we are talking about the Constitution, we must assume that the term is referred to ONLY in its legal sense. The identity of a "President elect" is not established at election time, nor is it established after the Electoral College cast their votes. It is only established once Congress has ratified the Electoral College votes as legal and binding.
Winning the election in November is just step one of a four-step process. Step two is the Electoral College. Step three is Congressional review and ratification of those results which finally establishes just who the President elect is. Step four is section three of the Twentieth amendment. Miss any one of these four steps and there is no LEGAL Constitutional President. Like perhaps, now.
Twentieth Amendment, Section three:
”3. If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified.”
Note the time indicated in the initial passage. It clearly refers to that period AFTER Congress has ratified the Electoral College results because the beginning of a term of office can only occur once there is someone to "begin" that term. Not only this, but Congress ratifies the Electoral College on January 15th. The beginning of a Presidential term is January 20th which is after the Electoral College ratification process is completed.
In addition to the Constitution, here is U.S. law...
U. S. Code, CITE: 3USC19
TITLE 3--THE PRESIDENT, CHAPTER 1- PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS AND VACANCIES
Sec. 19. Vacancy in offices of both President and Vice President; officers eligible to act
”(a)(1) If, by reason of death, resignation, removal from office, inability, or failure to qualify, there is neither a President nor Vice President to discharge the powers and duties of the office of President, then the Speaker of the House of Representatives shall, upon his resignation as Speaker and as Representative in Congress, act as President.“
Once again, from the U. S. Constitution, Article Six Oath of Office for elected officials:
” The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”
The portion in bold stating “or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify” in section three of the Twentieth amendment is particularly interesting in that it plainly seems to infer that a “qualification” of some sort must be made in order to serve as President. Certainly, one cannot argue that it does not require a qualification process for one to “qualify”. To infer that the lack of a “specified” qualification process means that stated eligibility “qualifications” for the office of president can be ignored is fallacious. The wording of this passage in the twentieth amendment clearly infers that a qualification is required, regardless of how this is done.
There is only one set of qualifications listed anywhere in the Constitution that are not health related and they are listed in Article two, section one.
” No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.”
Section three of the Twentieth amendment comes in to play as the LAST step in a process to ensure that a President is in fact legal. To satisfy meeting the requirement of the Twentieth amendment to “qualify”, a President elect must present evidence that he meets its requirements for eligibility to serve. This means that a proper birth certificate HAD to be presented by the president elect in order to serve as president. In fact, without establishing whether or not the President elect is "qualified", Congress would not know whether or not to step in and name a temporary replacement as the amendment requires. Certainly, this means that the proof of "qualifications" must be presented to Congress.
If someone does not have a birth certificate as the governor of Hawaii has stated, how was this proof of eligibility established? Where is that certificate and to whom was it presented? If this was done, why would we not have the right to verify and inspect it under the freedom of information act?
If it was NOT done, then under the provisions of the twentieth amendment, Barrack Obama has “failed to qualify” and cannot be serving as a legal president of the United States of America. Remember, the Constitution says in Article two, section one that "NO PERSON" who does not meet the eligibility requirements may serve as President. There is no wiggle room in this language.
Based upon the above, I conclude that:
1. We currently have a vacancy at President because no one has yet “qualified” as required in the Twentieth amendment. The terms "The President elect shall have failed to qualify" clearly places this burden upon the President elect and not on someone raising their hand in objection.
2. Anyone serving in Congress (see “Congress” in bold in section three of the Twentieth amendment), or anyone who is currently serving under the oath of office in Article six has "standing" and can DEMAND that their oaths be met by receiving proper “qualifying” documentation from Mr. Obama. The charade at the time of counting the Electoral College votes does not limit their ability to do so at any time they so choose. The very fact that they are duty-bound by oath to "support" the Constitution REQUIRES them to respond to any and all attacks against it. No judge can deny any of them the standing to do so. It would ask them to break the law in their effort to enforce the law.
3. Perhaps this issue would get addressed sooner if we started pressing legal charges against all of our local representatives and senators covered by the oath of office in Article six for disobeying their oaths to support the Constitution as it pertains to the language of section three of the Twentieth amendment. Put PRESSURE on them to represent the document that gives them their authority in the first place. This includes our brand new supposedly "Constitution loving" Tea Party" representatives.
It is first important to recognize that in accordance with the Constitution, a Vice President elect was certified and is eligible.
Then, the significant language of Amendment 20, Section 3 is: [I]f the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified . . . .
So where we are today is pretty clear--we have an eligible person certified as Vice President--Joe is and has been since January of 2009, Acting President.
The succession provisions, getting Joe out and a legitimate person in as a result of the 2008 election is also very tight. To get the Vice President in as President under the 25th amendment, you need to have removal, death, or resignation of a President. You can never get that with Zero because he isn't President--he wasn't eligible.
Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution is also pretty tight--there are actually three qualifications to hold the office of President: Age 35; 14 year resident; and natural born citizen. Suppose a person who was only 34 years old was certified as elected? Any doubt that he would not be eligible and could not hold the office? Not likely.
And the process of choosing the person from the electoral college vote is also pretty tight. To get an elected candidate, you need to get an individual who is on the list of having received the most votes. In the case of 2008, that question is pretty simple--the only other person who got votes is John McCain and he isn't eligible to hold the office either (for the reason that he was born in Colon Panama which is not now and never has been a part of the Untied States).
Where you get from here is a significant question of Constitutional Law.
My own opinion is that the Court would infer from the last two clauses of Section 3 of the 20th Amendment, a power in Congress to decide how to choose the President. And that view is in part supported by an informal opinion from one of the DC law firms to the leadership of the Dem Congress in the 111th Congress.
The possibilities discussed were: Simply elevate the VP; move to the line of succession; or look further back to Dem primary votes. Each of those possibilities identifies a different person and there was no consensus. Although my own view is that if that had ever come to fruition, we would have had our first woman President and her name would have been Nancy. Didn't happen. Too late to reconvene the 111th Congress at this point. Who knows what the Republican's would do today if asked.
There are several messages in this--one of which is that in any election in which the President is decided by more than one electoral vote, an elector who is not in a state that mandates his vote with criminal penalties should be encourage to cast his one vote for the VP on the winning ticket for president.
bfl
if a handwriting expert could state that the signature on the eligibility document was not Nancy Pelosi's...wouldn't that void it and make Obama not certified?
No, it does not look the same.
Maybe Pelosi was hedging her bets at the time and needed plausible deniability in case something went wrong, so she grabbed some illegal alien guy at a local Home Depot parking lot and paid him $50 to forge her signature. Then, if Hawaii had ever blown up, she could legally claim that the signature sent in the fraudulent affidavit was not hers... some other temp worker in the Dem HQ must have signed it (a la the mortgage mystery ghostwriters with deeds of trust). Once Hawaii bought into the fraud and printed the ballots, it would have made a challenge in the public all but impossible.
I’m no handwriting expert, but they sure look the same to me. My signature certainly is identical from day to day and there seem to a few common elements that aren’t “standard”, e.g., a capital N that looks like a croquet hoop,a small n that looks like a u, a y “stem” that bends to the right instead of the left,a i that looks like Mt Fuji etc.
That is highly unlikely to happen. First you're going to have to establish in the minds of the vast majority of citizens of the US (which includes the military) that Obama is ineligible. Then you're going to have to get the vast majority of those citizens to decide that doing something other than waiting it out is necessary.
None of this has happened, yet. I'm not even convinced that he's not eligible. I'm just not sure he IS!
OS
Anyhow, here we sit, grasping at straws in hopes of undoing the presumed election of a president. One who any right minded citizen instinctively knows has set a path that will, if allowed to proceed, destroy America. By just about any measure it's obvious he and his politburo are treading our Constitution into the mud. Where are some of our newly minted TEA Party congressmen on this? Why have we not heard a peep out of anybody? A Republican controlled House is not without juice to place this travesty and treason in every town square in the country. And yet, nothing.
Why Was the Electoral College Created?
by Marc Schulman The Electoral College was created for two reasons. The first purpose was to create a buffer between population and the selection of a President. The second as part of the structure of the government that gave extra power to the smaller states.
The first reason that the founders created the Electoral College is hard to understand today. The founding fathers were afraid of direct election to the Presidency. They feared a tyrant could manipulate public opinion and come to power. Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers:
It was equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations. It was also peculiarly desirable to afford as little opportunity as possible to tumult and disorder. This evil was not least to be dreaded in the election of a magistrate, who was to have so important an agency in the administration of the government as the President of the United States. But the precautions which have been so happily concerted in the system under consideration, promise an effectual security against this mischief.(See All of the Federalist 68)
Hamilton and the other founders believed that the electors would be able to insure that only a qualified person becomes President. They believed that with the Electoral College no one would be able to manipulate the citizenry. It would act as check on an electorate that might be duped. Hamilton and the other founders did not trust the population to make the right choice. The founders also believed that the Electoral College had the advantage of being a group that met only once and thus could not be manipulated over time by foreign governments or others.
The electoral college is also part of compromises made at the convention to satisfy the small states. Under the system of the Electoral College each state had the same number of electoral votes as they have representative in Congress, thus no state could have less then 3. The result of this system is that in this election the state of Wyoming cast about 210,000 votes, and thus each elector represented 70,000 votes, while in California approximately 9,700,000 votes were cast for 54 votes, thus representing 179,000 votes per electorate. Obviously this creates an unfair advantage to voters in the small states whose votes actually count more then those people living in medium and large states.
One aspect of the electoral system that is not mandated in the constitution is the fact that the winner takes all the votes in the state. Therefore it makes no difference if you win a state by 50.1% or by 80% of the vote you receive the same number of electoral votes. This can be a recipe for one individual to win some states by large pluralities and lose others by small number of votes, and thus this is an easy scenario for one candidate winning the popular vote while another winning the electoral vote. This winner take all methods used in picking electors has been decided by the states themselves. This trend took place over the course of the 19th century.
While there are clear problems with the Electoral College and there are some advantages to it, changing it is very unlikely. It would take a constituitional amendment ratified by 3/4 of states to change the system. It is hard to imagine the smaller states agreeing. One way of modifying the system s to eliminate the winner take all part of it. The method that the states vote for the electoral college is not mandated by the consitution but is decided by the states. Two states do not use the winner take all system, Maine and Nebraska. It would be difficult but not impossible to get other states to change their systems, unfortunately the party that has the advantage in the state is unlikely to agree to a unilateral change.
If we label the signature on the left as exhibit "A", the one in the middle as exhibit "B", and the one on the right exhibit "C" there are some anomalies, to wit:
The "N" in A and C match. The "a" in A and C match. The "n" in A and B match. The "c" in A and C match. The "y" in A and C match. Conclusion: in the first name, exhibits A and C are closer to a match than exhibit B.
The "P" in A and C match. The "e" in A and C match. The "l" in A and C match. The "o" in A and C match. The "s" is a closer match in B and C. The "i" is a closer match in A and C. Conclusion: in the last name, exhibits A and C are closer to a match than B.
Methinks exhibit B is a forgery.
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5.56mm
The method of "proving" qualification is not prescribed. I agree completely that the primary blame for this fiasco lies with Congress, all 535 of them. Not one challenge after the electoral ballots were counted. Not a single one, and all it takes for a challenge is two Congresspeople, one Senator, and one Rep.
The federal government is completely out of control, and this is not the first case of utter dereliction of duty. See too "coin money and regulate the value thereof." These perfumed princes get all the perks, and none of the accountability. And at the same time, they are stripping power and wealth from the people.
Thanks Uncle Sham.
</sarc>
What if only one small, solidly Republican state requires eligibility? Could Obama get away with ignoring it and staying off the ballot? How would he and the nation respond?
I think the media would try to discredit the state and call it a stunt. They would spin it that Obama should boycott that state's ballot as a matter of "principle." But the spin will not gain traction, and eligibility will become an unignorable issue. Obama's best chance would be legal challenges by third parties.
Thanks for the laugh....I just thought that it appeared the first signature was even a misspelling of Pelosi...thinking it spelled Peloci....
. . . . Important article, and David's comment at # 21. Other important discussion throughout the thread.
Thanks, David.
TO be honest, the one in the middle is the one that looks least like the other two due to the P.
I have addressed this a couple of times however Sham has done a good job of summarizing a part of the technical and I am going to summarize the end game as I see it.
It is first important to recognize that in accordance with the Constitution, a Vice President elect was certified and is eligible.
Then, the significant language of Amendment 20, Section 3 is: [I]f the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified . . . .
So where we are today is pretty clear—we have an eligible person certified as Vice President—Joe is and has been since January of 2009, Acting President.
The succession provisions, getting Joe out and a legitimate person in as a result of the 2008 election is also very tight. To get the Vice President in as President under the 25th amendment, you need to have removal, death, or resignation of a President. You can never get that with Zero because he isn’t President—he wasn’t eligible.
Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution is also pretty tight—there are actually three qualifications to hold the office of President: Age 35; 14 year resident; and natural born citizen. Suppose a person who was only 34 years old was certified as elected? Any doubt that he would not be eligible and could not hold the office? Not likely.
And the process of choosing the person from the electoral college vote is also pretty tight. To get an elected candidate, you need to get an individual who is on the list of having received the most votes. In the case of 2008, that question is pretty simple—the only other person who got votes is John McCain and he isn’t eligible to hold the office either (for the reason that he was born in Colon Panama which is not now and never has been a part of the Untied States).
Where you get from here is a significant question of Constitutional Law.
My own opinion is that the Court would infer from the last two clauses of Section 3 of the 20th Amendment, a power in Congress to decide how to choose the President. And that view is in part supported by an informal opinion from one of the DC law firms to the leadership of the Dem Congress in the 111th Congress.
The possibilities discussed were: Simply elevate the VP; move to the line of succession; or look further back to Dem primary votes. Each of those possibilities identifies a different person and there was no consensus. Although my own view is that if that had ever come to fruition, we would have had our first woman President and her name would have been Nancy. Didn’t happen. Too late to reconvene the 111th Congress at this point. Who knows what the Republican’s would do today if asked.
There are several messages in this—one of which is that in any election in which the President is decided by more than one electoral vote, an elector who is not in a state that mandates his vote with criminal penalties should be encourage to cast his one vote for the VP on the winning ticket for president.
Plaintiffs attempt to subvert this grant of power to Congress by convincing the Court that it should disregard the constitutional procedures in place for the removal of a sitting president. The process for removal of a sitting president—removal for any reason—is within the purview of Congress, not the Courts.—U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter, Barnett et. al. v Obama, et. al., 10/29/09
I was thinking the same thing. The one in the middle is less like the other two.
I totally agree...I have to ask myself, if that were my name, would I sign once as PELOCI - and another time as PELOSI?
And that capital ‘N’ why make two attempts to write it?
Eldrige Cleaver was tossed off the ballot in California. He was running for president in that state at least but was only 33 years old. So he got on the ballot (via signatures I suppose) but was later thrown off
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