SHARPEDGENEWS.COM, Kansas City – FOLLOWING Friday’s withdrawal of a suit instituted by a Kansas man, Joe
Montgomery, to stop President Barack Obama from getting listed on the ballot on grounds of citizenship questions, the state of Kansas will feature the president’s name on the ballot after all.
Mr. Montgomery, a worker with the University of Kansas, claimed that there were lingering doubts on the citizenship of Mr. Obama, claiming the withdrawal of the lawsuit became necessary in light of what he said were vindictive pressure directed at him from across the country.
Mr. Obama’s mother, along with his grandparents, were from the state of Kansas. Montgomery’s suit withdrawal still does not stop another court action instituted by the state’s Republican secretary of state, who said the birth certificate already posted on the internet by Obama was unsatisfactory.
The state of Hawaii where Mr. Obama was born had confirmed that the president was indeed born in the state, but his detractors continue to struggle to delegitimize him as an inauthentic American.
After a hearing on Thursday, the state’s Objections Board, led by Mr. Kobach, a conservative Republican, said it needed more information before issuing a ruling.
Mr. Montgomery argued that under case law, to be eligible to become president, a person must be born in the United States to parents who are citizens. Mr. Obama’s father was from Kenya, and his mother was from Kansas. Mr. Montgomery also speculated that the birth certificate that Mr. Obama released last year may have been forged
But a lawyer for the Obama campaign, in a letter to Mr. Kobach, said that Mr. Montgomery’s interpretation of the law was contrary to what the Supreme Court had held for “over a hundred years.”
Because no representative of Mr. Obama appeared at the hearing on Thursday and the only response his campaign provided was the one-and-a-half-page letter, which the state deemed cursory, the board decided it could not rule immediately.
Brad Bryant, the state’s election director, noted that in other states like Arizona, officials had also sought to verify Mr. Obama’s birth certificate to ensure his eligibility for their ballots.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Kobach’s office said that the state was required to review objections to the ballot.
The Objections Board is made up of Mr. Kobach and two other Republicans, Attorney General Derek Schmidt and Lt. Gov. Jeffrey Colyer.
In a lengthy brief filed with the state, Mr. Montgomery cited 19th-century case law in arguing that Mr. Obama was not a natural-born citizen. “Our nation’s founders wanted to prevent our president from having any citizenship conflicts due to parents who were not citizens and who did not intend to become citizens,” Mr. Montgomery wrote.
Later, Mr. Montgomery wrote that “Mr. Obama has failed to provide any valid, certified documentary evidence to legally establish birth in this country, much less to citizen parents. Further there is substantial evidence showing that much of Mr. Obama’s alleged birth certificates have been forged or doctored, and have not been confirmed as legally valid, true and accurate.”
Fearing that the “birther” conspiracies had started to move into the mainstream, in large part because one of their loudest advocates was Donald Trump, Mr. Obama pushed back last year, releasing his long-form birth certificate. It shows he was born in Hawaii in 1961.