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Barack Obama Is One Step Closer To Being President
At 3:00 Eastern time on Monday Dec. 15, 538 electors in state capitols across the US cast the votes that actually elected Barack Obama the 44th President. Obama received, unofficially, 365 electoral votes (with 270 needed to win). The exact total will not be official — or Obama officially elected — until Congress certifies the count of electoral votes in a joint session on Jan. 6, 2009. The Electoral College was established in its present form in 1804 by the Twelfth Amendment to the US Constitution. Electors are not required to vote for the candidate who won their state — in fact, 24 states make it a criminal offense to vote otherwise, but no "faithless elector" has ever been charged with a crime. "On 158 occasions, electors have cast their votes for President or Vice President in a manner different from that prescribed by the legislature of the state they represented. Of those, 71 votes were changed because the original candidate died before the elector was able to cast a vote. Two votes were not cast at all when electors chose to abstain from casting their electoral vote for any candidate. The remaining 85 were changed by the elector's personal interest, or perhaps by accident. Usually, the faithless electors act alone. An exception was in 1836 when 23 Virginia electors changed their vote together. ... To date, faithless electors have never changed the otherwise expected outcome of the election."
Incorrect. Barack Hussein Obama was, indeed, born in Hawaii 2 years after Hawaii achieved statehood. Read all about it on Snopes. Say what you will, but Barb and Dave are usually pretty good about scoping out all the facts.
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Actually, the way the Electoral College was suppose to work was changed back after our fourth election for POTUS. Jefferson (the presidential candidate) and Burr (the *VICE* presidential candidate) both got the same number of electoral votes. This happened because the wisdom of our founding fathers dictated that each elector got TWO votes for president. The second place finisher was suppose to be vice president. This was the first campaign where the election of president was actually contested, and the results led to the creation of our first two party system with Federalists and Republicans (who later became known as the Democratic Republicans and even later as Democrats).
Since all of the Republican electors chose both Jefferson and Burr, they were tied in the Electoral College. Officially, Burr should have stepped aside and let Jefferson be president. However, Federalists convinced Burr not to drop out, and the vote went to the House where after 30 ballots, there was still no decision. Hamilton -- a Federalist -- convinced Federalist House members that not respecting the outcome of the election was probably more damaging to the Republic than allowing an "atheist" like Jefferson as President.
The whole Electoral College system came about because we didn't have universal suffrage in this country. In Virginia, the most populous state, only White males with the largest land holdings could vote while in Pennsylvania, almost all freemen were allowed to vote. Allowing a direct vote for President would mean that smaller Pennsylvania would have two to three times the voting power of Virginia.
The Constitutional Convention tried to come up with tax and landholding requirements for voting, but failed. Plus, there was disagreement about how slaves should affect a state's voting power for the office. The Electoral College was a punt. The Constitution didn't even bother to specify how electors would be chosen.
They did give each elector the ability to have two votes for President, so they could choose one local guy and one guy who wasn't a resident of that state. This was done because when you only have a very small select group of men voting, their was fear that there would be a lot of political hanky-panky and vote trading. Allowing the electors an outlet to cast a spurious vote for a local political bigwig was a way of venting this political horse trading. After all, what was the worse that could happen?
In the first three elections, all electors were chosen by the voters, and the electors were chosen by districts. This was how the election was envisioned to happen by our founding fathers. However, when Adams ran against Jefferson, states started mucking up the rules. In New York, the way electors were chosen was changed from election (which would allow the Republicans to get some electors) to having the legislature choose them (to guarantee all electors would be Federalists). When the Federalists lost the legislature, the outgoing legislature changed the rules to allow the Governor to choose them instead of the Republican dominated incoming legislature.
Election shenanigans wasn't a Federalist monopoly. Almost all states changed the way electors were chosen in order to satisfy the dominant political party. It was the first time states used a winner takes all method of selecting electors. A method that is still with us today, and probably not something the original writers of the Constitution imagined would happen.
Today, the United States is one of the few presidential republics that don't allow direct election of their president. Historically, electoral colleges were used to keep the powers in power. It was the way Indonesia used to keep Suharto in power and it is currently used in Hong Kong to keep democracy advocates at bay. It's a great way to make sure that you can remain in power when you don't have popular support.
The Electoral College in the U.S. lost its initial purpose with the election of Andrew Jackson which started a period of universal suffrage when property and
When questions about his birth appeared, he published a scanned copy of his Certificate of Live Birth on his website. FactCheck.org and PolitiFact.com both show copies of it.
For purposes of proving birth, it is accepted by all other states and the federal government as proof. You can use it to get a passport.
When requesting proof of birth, the State of Hawaii, like many other states, does not send someone down to the archives to photocopy old records. Instead, the State of Hawaii will look up the data, print out a certificate, put a seal on it, and put a stamped signature. The COLB is a short form copy that does not have all the details of the long form original like the hospital. Because some individuals are not born in a hospital, the short form copy lists only those fields which are relevant to all births like "Place of Birth".
To be clear, Obama's team has never claimed that the COLB was his original birth certificate only that it was an official copy of his birth certificate. As for possessing an original birth certificate, many people do not have theirs. They may have been lost over the years. For most people, when you request a copy from your state, most likely the state will print out a copy as Hawaii as done here.
Both the seal and the signature appear on the back of the form which was not scanned. The seal is raised and would not easily appear on a scan anyways. Viewing the document at an angle, you can see the seal. Factcheck.org has seen the COLB and has taken other pictures.
Most government signatures for documents like this are not hand signatures; they are stamped signatures.
The look of birth certificates varies from state to state and in some cases, county to county. The COLB presented by Obama is the same form as any other COLB from Hawaii.
The COLB lists the Place of Birth. In Obama's case, it lists "Honolulu".
Starting in 1982, the State of Hawaii allowed parents to register their children who were born elsewhere as an secondary means of proof just like a passport proves citizenship in lieu of a Certificate of Naturalization or a birth certificate. However, the COLB would not deviate the Place of Birth from the original birth certificate. If a child was not born in Hawaii, the COLB would list their Place of Birth as some place other than "Hawaii". This registration was not an option for Obama's mother as he was born in 1961.
Obama's campaign says blacking out the numbers was a cautionary move just in case the number was security sensitive just like you would not post a SSN online. As it turns out, it was not. FactCheck shows the number.
A datestamp on the jpeg can mean anything like
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.