U.S. Congress Certifies Electoral Votes for Barack Obama

BUT DOES HE QUALIFY?

by Sharon Rondeau

(Jan. 4, 2013) — As per statute HJR 122, the newly-sworn-in U.S. Congress met in joint session on Friday at 1:00 p.m. and certified 332 electoral votes for Barack Obama and Joseph Biden for president and vice president, respectively.  Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan received 206 electoral votes.

The date set by federal statute for Congress to certify the electoral votes is January 6 unless the date is amended by Congress.  Because January 6 falls on a Sunday this year, Congress voted to change the date to January 4.

The Electoral College process and system were laid out in the Constitution by the Founding Fathers, who believed that the states should elect the president.

The meeting adjourned at 1:34:14 after no apparent objections to the certification were raised.  Earlier this week in a “Warning to Congress,” every congressman and senator was formally served and asked to delay the certification of the votes due to claims of election fraud, including the Obama campaign’s knowing acceptance of foreign donations in violation of federal election law.

Questions about the constitutional eligibility of Barack Obama were first voiced in 2008 by supporters of then-Democrat primary contender Hillary Clinton, who claimed that Obama might not be a “natural born Citizen” as required by Article II, Section 1, clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution for the office of president.  Several Democrat caucus observers who later produced a film citing significant caucus fraud claimed that Bill Clinton had himself stated that Obama did not qualify.

News companies have conflated the terms “native-born citizen” and “natural born Citizen.” However, the term “native-born citizen” does not appear in the Constitution.

In several reports generated during Obama’s first term, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) omitted information from legal cases which included the parents’ citizenship as a factor in determining whether or not a person is a “natural born Citizen.”

Obama’s official biography stated that he was born in Kenya from 1991 to 2007, when the official narrative changed to say he was born in Hawaii.  He appears to have no relatives there except a purported half-sister who acknowledges having been born in Indonesia.  In March 2010, members of the Kenyan Parliament declared on the record that Obama was born in their country.

More than 100 lawsuits have been filed challenging Obama’s eligibility based on the lack of proof about his birthplace, parents, and whether or not he meets the definition of “natural born Citizen,” but no court has ruled on the merits of any case.  It has been argued by legal scholars from the time of the Framers of the Constitution to present day that “natural born Citizen” means “born in the country to parents who are citizens.”  In 1916, an attorney and U.S. ambassador to Italy, Breckinridge Long, argued that a child born in the U.S. to British-citizen parents could not be eligible for the presidency.

Obama claims to have been born to a father who was a citizen of Great Britain and later, Kenya, after that nation obtained its independence from British rule.

On Thursday, Atty. Orly Taitz requested a temporary restraining order to the certification of the electoral votes in a federal courtroom in Sacramento, CA on the claim that Obama’s long-form birth certificate presented to the public in April 2011 is a poor forgery and that the Social Security number he is using is “stolen.”  Taitz presented affidavits from a law enforcement investigation and retired Coast Guard investigator stating that Obama’s documentation is fraudulent.  Judge Morrison England denied the request for the restraining order, stating that the U.S. Constitution does not require a candidate for president to have valid documentation.

Two eligibility challenges were distributed for conference at the U.S. Supreme Court for Friday.

Obama has been accused of committing treason by a retired member of the U.S. Navy.  LCDR Walter Francis Fitzpatrick, III filed his first treason complaint on March 17, 2009 and was visited by the Secret Service two days later.  He was not arrested, but rather, told by an FBI agent in a private moment, “We can’t arrest him, you know.”

Taitz wrote on Friday that “the case goes on.”

The inauguration of the president and vice president normally occurs on January 20, but since the 20th is a Sunday, it will take place on January 21.  Section 3 of the 20th Amendment to the Constitution states, in part, “…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.”