New York State Board of Elections Continues to Misinform on Presidential Eligibility

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by Sharon Rondeau

(Dec. 10, 2023) — A decade and a half after discovering the New York State Board of Elections (NYSBOE) to be misstating a requirement for U.S. presidential candidates, New York resident Robert C. Laity found on Sunday the website continues to misinform the public on that point.

Consulting the “Running for Office” webpage, which begins with the qualifications for “President of the United States,” on Sunday Laity found the first of three requirements included in Article II, Section 1, clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution appearing as “Born a citizen” rather than “natural born Citizen.”

The error is unchanged from 15 years ago when Laity first became aware of questions surrounding the presidential eligibility of Barack Hussein Obama, later followed by a number of other presidential candidates from both major political parties.

Earlier today, Laity contacted the NYSBOE with the following message:

NEW YORK STATE BOARD OF ELECTIONS:

15 years after I informed the NYSBOE that the criteria for becoming President is NOT to be “born a citizen” but to be a “Natural Born Citizen”. The criteria is STILL being misrepresented.

Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy are NOT “Natural Born Citizens” of the USA.

Robert C. Laity, Complainant

Below his name Laity placed a link to the following article published at The Post & Email in October 2017 demonstrating the NYSBOE’s ongoing inaccurate depiction of the requirement.

Presidential Eligibility Requirement Misstated by New York State Board of Elections

The article was prompted by a formal letter Laity wrote to the Board after he launched a number of legal challenges to Obama’s presidential eligibility. Laity would later file lawsuits and ballot challenges stating that former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and Kamala Harris are ineligible to serve in that capacity.

As readers of this publication are aware, much controversy has surrounded the meaning of “natural born Citizen,” but no contest to anyone’s knowledge has ever arisen as to the inclusion of those three words in Article II outlining the requirements and duties of the President of the United States as the head of the Executive Branch of government.

Just after publishing Laity’s 2017 letter, The Post & Email contacted the NYSBOE through its website portal to ask about the wording discrepancy but never received a response.

Since 2008, Laity has staunchly advocated for his belief that the Founders intended “natural born Citizen” to signify a person born within the United States to citizen parents to ensure undivided allegiance to the nation. Among other actions, two years ago, he conducted a solo letter-writing campaign to every member of Congress urging for the introduction and passage of a constitutional amendment defining “natural born Citizen” to eliminate all uncertainty as to the Founders’ intent.

As stated in his email Sunday to the Board, Laity believes 2024 Republican presidential primary candidates Nimrata Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy are ineligible to the office given that, while both were born in the U.S., neither had U.S.-citizen parents.

As reported by CDR Charles F. Kerchner, Jr. (Ret) in October, Ramaswamy acknowledged in a recent interview with NBC News that his parents were not U.S. citizens when he was born and further, that his father had never naturalized. “He is thus a dual-citizen by birth and is NOT a ‘natural born Citizen’ of the United States with sole allegiance and unity of citizenship at birth to the USA and only the USA, which is required of the person who would be Commander in Chief of our military for national security reasons,” Kerchner wrote.

Legal scholar Joseph DeMaio has written extensively on the “natural born Citizen (“NBC”) question and wrote on the issue Saturday:

The Founders did not concoct the term out of whole cloth or pluck it out of thin air. Nor did they labor and ruminate over whether it included a “citizen at birth” or a “citizen by birth” as advocated by Messrs. Clement and Katyal in their article.

The Court in Minor [v. Happersett] was stating that the Founders knew, without any doubt, that it meant a person born on U.S. soil to parents both of whom were already U.S. citizens.

As DeMaio has often reiterated, in 2010 U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas told a congressional committee that regarding the questions surrounding the meaning of “natural born Citizen,” the court was “evading the issue.”