Talk:United States presidential eligibility legislation/Archive 1

Archive 1

Arkansas (2011)

Arkansas introduced presidential eligibility legislation in 2011, but it is hard to find a WP:RS. Please add if a RS is found. --Weazie (talk) 08:05, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Birth Certificate Request

Whats up with all those people asking that candidates must have birth certificates to prove their citizenship between 2009 to 2011? I'm sensing a pattern here but can't put my finger on it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.29.85.42 (talk) 20:19, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Rising to what is evidently a somewhat naive question, none the less raises a more serious secondary question, whether the contents of these sections should not at the end of the Obama Presidency be transferred to a section in the Barack Obama page. Wikipedia should be factual, and although criticism of an incumbent President is a fact, it must be distinguished from generic criticism or constraints on the Presidency as a whole, and that criterion, I would argue, should be used as the basis for transferring those sections which are not legally-consolidated into the general qualification onus any President to a section on critiques in the Obama meme. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 176.249.86.162 (talk) 06:27, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

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Requirement to provide Past Income Tax Forms

This article talks about New York and California. http://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/350789-california-legislature-passes-bill-requiring-presidential-candidates-to • Sbmeirow • Talk • 10:51, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Constitutional eligibility contradiction using Original research

The eligibility requirements in this article contains Original Research WP:OR stating "includes that of the President" is WP:SYN and contradicts secondary sources in Officer under the United States. The list item below is primary source only WP:PRIMARY and should not be part of Wikipedia. Neither the word President nor the office of the President are mentioned in the citation.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.46.249.141 (talk) 03:48, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

No deletion; instead added to a link to the Officer of the United States article, as well as a link to a secondary source saying the president is an officer of the United States. --Weazie (talk) 04:29, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Delete; A new citation contains no mention at all of disqualification and makes the article worse with more WP:SYNTHESIS. Even with synthesis fails to justify inclusion of the list item: The citation recently included appears to be a debate which two scholars offer WP:PRIMARY interpretations, saying both the President is and is not an officer providing arguments on each side. Only one side is presented by the editor WP:NPOV. The citation fails WP:IMPARTIAL as it is misquoted and misrepresents one side as a fact. The cite quote is not WP:BALANCED. On the same page the editor cites, p. 157, the same author who allegedly affirms the President as an "officer" concedes his opponent's position with this quote:

That leaves us with Tillman’s argument about the Commissions Clause, where, as I conceded in my Opening Statement, he has a valid point. The Commissions Clause commands that the President must commission all the officers of the United States, and yet no President has commissioned himself, his successor, or his Vice President. Thus, Tillman has an argument from practice that Presidents and Vice Presidents either have not been regarded as being officers of the United States or at least that the question has been embarrassingly overlooked.

The new citation greatly diminishes this article. Please immediately delete the list item from the article and talk about it here until WP:VERIFY is met.
--47.196.197.231 (talk) 16:56, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

Deleted - This "Article 1" list item is removed, do not replace without a good citation please WP:VERIFY. It also contradicts verified sources.

--Frobozz1 (talk) 04:29, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

• Re-inserted After a five second google search. As for the argument that "any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States" does not somehow also include that of the president, I'm a bit flabbergasted as that is more or less obvious, and well clarifying that to our readers is not in any way a bad idea. Even the Senate source I cited does say: "The president, vice president, and all civil officers of the United States are subject to impeachment."; so it specifically points out both the president and the vice-president; as well as all other public offices. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 21:55, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

You claim the section is based on WP:PRIMARY. In this case, this would be an acceptable use of such sources (since they're used to support material directly about them; i.e. the most reliable source for the content of the US Constitution, unsurprisingly, is the US Constitution itself). However, it also appears that most of the content is sourced not to the constitution but to sites which provide secondary commentary on it, i.e. WP:SECONDARY sources. I fail to see the grounds for your objections; and in any case, the constitutional requirements for president are certainly a necessary starting point to discuss the article topic. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 00:32, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

• Deleted - Failed verification. NOTE: this is in discussion. Please observe the WP:BRD cycle and discuss sources, as the consensus reached was that WP:MAINSTREAM opinion holds the Amendment 1 eligibility as debatable. Further insertion of Article 1 as "fact" may be seen as WP:EDIT WARRING without (3RR).
  

This content failed verification once and was removed. RandomCanadian inserted the consensus view that there was a debate, and has now re-inserted as "fact" a personal narrative disregarding the consensus based on "more or less obvious" OR.

The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material, and it is satisfied by providing an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the contribution.

Directly supports and More or less obvious are different things, nor is the legal and Constitutional use of the word "office" in any possible way obvious.

Directly supports: It is required that any source used here states cannot be elected as President, because there are more than one federal position which is "elected;" and the citation must state that the cause of that ineligibility to the Presidency is a judgement under Article 1 in order for this to be used in a Wikipedia article which is very specifically about eligibility to be President of the United States, and then makes a factual claim that impeachment will cause that ineligibility. You have made that factual claim and provided no WP:VERIFIABLE support. The "factual" claim is also directly contradicted by the more reliable Reuters citation.

The Jan Wolfe article clearly expresses a WP:MAINSTREAM point of view;

“ There is some debate over the scope of the disqualification clause and whether it applies to the presidency, said Brian Kalt, a law professor at Michigan State University.

Analyzing historical documents, some law experts say the founders did not intend the presidency to be considered an “office” under the disqualification clause

”

The editorial citation fails WP:MAINSTREAM as it is the WP:PRIMARY source opinion of only one lawyer alone (published in the Ideas section of The Atlantic magazine).
It is already established that the fourteenth Amendment prohibits officials who committed misdeeds like rebellion from being elected to Congress, and Mr. Bernstein clearly states this example in the quote used to prove an eligibility requirement: "the Constitution adds a category of people who cannot be elected [to Congress] as a result of their misdeeds [of rebellion]."

Mr. Bernstein does not state that impeachment + disqualification causes any ineligibility for the Presidency, his narrative - "This category includes..." - only puts impeached persons into the same box of persons who may be denied some unspecified election, for some unspecified misdeeds.

The Atlantic is saying what we all already know. We understand that the Constitution creates a box for people who rebell, and then declares that people in that box cannot be elected to a seat in Congress. They indeed will be denied election to a Congressional seat if they also rebell, but there is no place where Bernstein says people in that box will be ineligible to become President. Any cite used here must meet the WP:BURDEN to state this without WP:SYNTHESIS and must present a WP:MAINSTREAM POV derived from a WP:VER source. Because it is factually true and possible to read Bernstein's opinion as "This category [of people who cannot be elected to Congress as a result of rebellion] includes presidents (along with vice presidents and federal “civil officers”) who are impeached, convicted by two-thirds of the Senate, and disqualified for serious misconduct committed while they were in office," this citation fails the WP:BURDEN and is being removed.

You were correct to "clarify" but not correct to use OR to make a factual definition of a well-defined legal term. An "office" is in all cases a tenured position with sovereignty; the POTUS very obviously (and both Court and Congress has stated) has neither tenure (his term ends exactly after four years) nor sovereignty (he only gets the job after the States trust him, and must leave when they no longer trust of him). This is why the POTUS is defined as an Article VI Public trust. The seat is owned by the public and filled by a person who the public has given their trust to in a general election. Every four years he gets a "report card" and we tell him if we still trust him to do our bidding. George Washington's 1796 farewell address opens with a very clear summary of his position:

“ The period for a new election of a citizen to administer the executive government of the United States being not far distant, and the time actually arrived when your thoughts must be employed in designating the person who is to be clothed with that important trust ”

I suggest that quality subverts quantity; creating this narrative of a factual Article 1 disqualification from Presidential eligibility is a fruitless unicorn hunt. We understand that a large number of editors would like it to become believed through offhand insinuations, as conflict creates revenue. What disqualification exactly means has been very clearly understood for over 200 years, this confusion only creates with WP:VERIFIED articles here and turns Wikipedia into a tabloid. @RandomCanadian: — Preceding unsigned comment added by Frobozz1 (talk • contribs) 19:08, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

Background: The U.S. Constitution on presidential eligibility

• Under Article I, Section 3, Clause 7, upon conviction in impeachment cases, the Senate has the option to order, by a simple majority, that an individual be forever disqualified from holding federal office, which includes that of president. 199.46.249.141 (talk) 03:48, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

References

14th Amendment list item failed verification. Removing until secondary source is found.

The citation mentions "elector of President" but not the President. Delete 14th amendment until secondary source citation is found. --Frobozz1 (talk) 04:42, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

Conclusion, hopefully

• After some further digging, I have found an explicit source for Art. I Clause 7; and I have found sources which clearly discuss both of these as subject to legal debate, so I have included that information too. Removing it, now that we have proper reliable source coverage, would be counter-productive; especially now that I've taken the time to WP:FIXIT. Cheers, RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 04:57, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

The opening needs to change "would, however, still be disqualified" to "may be disqualified". & I think it needs to be WP:BALANCED, a quick read of the article suggests a disqualified president likely could be ineligible, a position neither citation states if you filter out WP:SENSATIONALISM. The citations conclude the following:

1. The Atlantic has an eye-catching headline that says, "Lots of People Are Disqualified From Becoming President"
   The whole thing basically says the president should be ineligible because others are, like foreigners and young senators and doesn't give facts.
   

Giving due weight to the fact that this is one lawyer's opinion, he says disqualification is a "too early argument" that he disagrees with. He factually says that the "too late argument" was "rebutted" (that the President can't be tried after leaving office). But other than emotional appeals he doesn't say Article 1 can stop anyone from being elected even though he thinks it "would be right" if it could do that.

1. The Reuters article is easy. Wolfe basically plays around with banning Trump from "office" without really talking about which office. They interview a law professor from Michigan who says some law experts say the founders intended the presidency to be considered an “office” and others said they didn't, but "If you are going to say someone can’t run, you want to get that litigated and settled sooner rather than later," because the Supreme Court will likely want to rule if it is lawful.

OK, so that's the meat and potatoes of the citations, feel free to look for more "meat" if you find it. What I think this article should say would be the following.

1) Article 1, §3, clause 7 allows Congress to disqualify impeached persons from future office but there is no current consensus among law experts that the presidency is an "office" in the way the Constitution defines them in the Appointments Clause. This disqualification has only ever been used on three judicial officers who were clearly holding constitutional offices.

2) The 12th Amendment prevents certain officials who have taken an oath and committed treason or rebelled against the United States from holding certain offices unless the Senate approves of them with a 2/3 vote. Law experts suggest the Supreme Court should litigate any attempt to prevent any citizen from running for office to determine if that is legal, because again there is no agreement if the presidency is a constitutional "office under the united states."

It could use tweaking but that's the gist of the citations I think. Have at it.--199.46.251.141 (talk) 04:28, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

This man's job is to rebell.

-EEng

Coatrack

This article is about "several state legislatures [that considered] legislation aimed at requiring future presidential candidates to show proof of presidential eligibility before being granted ballot access in their state." Whether the Senate may disqualify an impeached and convicted president has nothing to do with this article; no state legislature has proposed legislation requiring convicted presidents to show that they also weren't disqualified. --Weazie (talk) 17:50, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

To be fair, this whole article could probably be somehow merged with the one on the litigation (the section on the main article about the conspiracy theory already logically groups them). As to whether the details about eligibility disqualifications are UNDUE here, it would be painting an uncomplete picture (thus, error by omission) to not include it in some way. Maybe I can try summarising it instead. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 23:02, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

The revised final paragraph in the "Background" looks good to me; thanks. But if it continues to be a coatrack to dispute whether a president can be disqualified following a conviction in the Senate, the better course of action would be to just delete the entire paragraph, as it adds little to this article's actual topic and therefore is WP:UNDUE. --Weazie (talk) 23:36, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

As I said the more long-term solution might be to simply merge this together with Barack Obama presidential eligibility litigation since all of this should be covered with the context of the Birther conspiracy (which there was no mention of here until I added a small paragraph). RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 23:51, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

That would be consistent with the discussion above. I think it is more a question of someone volunteering to take the laboring oar. Weazie (talk) 05:37, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

@Frobozz1: Please tell me where you see "consensus" (either here or in the previous sections) to 1) include text which was never in the article and 2) make the section even longer that it is (when there's clear agreement that it needs to be kept short so as not to go off-topic; and you previously said it shouldn't even be in here). RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 23:30, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

The consensus was that the applicability was debated. Text was made less ambiguous hoping to avert another editorial "fact" inclusion. I agree it should be shorter, I don't know how to accomplish the goal of saying both concisely and conclusively that "there exists a debate" about the applicability of Article 1 and 14th Amendment to the Presidency, so I dumped all the relevant facts. Edit at will but please don't change what is established as fact.

--Frobozz1 (talk) 00:07, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

The idea was that, for the same reasons that we don't include all the details about the 22nd amendment here, we don't include all the details about these two others here (since we agreed that it needed to be shortened) - I've put it verbatim with all the details at President_of_the_United_States#Eligibility instead. We could insert a fragment, but I'm not sure where without making the sentence awkward (a footnote, maybe?). RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 00:39, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

I have been consistent and clear that a "dispute" about whether a convicted president can also be disqualified has nothing to do with this article. That this material nonetheless is repeatedly being inserted further shows it being used as a WP:COATRACK. Literally nothing about a president's possible disqualification is relevant to this article, which is about legislation requiring proof of eligibility. --Weazie (talk) 07:46, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Birther content tossed

I've tossed all the birther stuff that was copied over from it's own page. It does not belong here. It already has it's own page, that is all it deserves. If the birthers wanna cry about this they can click the link that will bring them to their safe space. I've had enough of their nonsense. Allthenamesarealreadytaken (talk) 04:51, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Much of the information in this article was copied from the Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories article so it could be deleted there, to make that article shorter. Without restoring the information there, deletion here defeats the purpose of why this article was created in the first place. --Weazie (talk) 06:36, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

I don't think that is the correct way of doing things. This article is supposed to be about what the United States presidential eligibility legislation actually is, not what a bunch of conspiracy theory fools did with Obama's birth certificate. The two are only tangentially connected. One is about what the law is, the other is a bunch of conspiracy theory idiocy. They should only have separate articles. Allthenamesarealreadytaken (talk) 23:41, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Allthenamesarealreadytaken, You have "tossed all the birther stuff" twice, the second time after having your edit reverted. This IS NOT an effective way of reaching consensus (please see: Wikipedia:BRD). For your edit to gain my support (I cannot speak for others) you need to show that the information you removed regarding federal and state presidential eligibility legislation has been added to or already exists in another article. Will you do that? Another question I have is, why didn't you cut the "Presidential eligibility" section and leave the rest? You may not have realized it, but, that section's sole purpose was to provide background and constitutional context for the sections that followed. Without those sections there is no reason for this page/article to exist, except as a redirect to President of the United States#Eligibility. Drdpw (talk) 01:23, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Yeah I'm in the same boat. I'll listen, but that's way too large a reversion to do without consensus. Isingness (talk) 07:24, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

I've reverted again. WP:BRD means discussing after the first reversion. There obviously is no consensus for the proposed edit -- which is tantamount to blanking. As the lead says, this article is about legislative attempts to require proof of eligibility from candidates. By blanking most of the body of the article, there is nothing of note remaining; it is deletion in all but name. A discussion about constructive edits is welcome; an edit war is are not. --Weazie (talk) 07:45, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

The problem here is that when you search for POTUS eligibility requirements you get this page instead of President of the United States#Eligibility. That's a problem becasue this page is more about all the birther nonsense than it is about US presidential eligibility. Therefore I propose this page be renamed to "Barack Obama presidential eligibility legislation" or "Birther legislation." After all, the name of the movement behind all this legislation and lirtigation was "Birther" was it not? Allthenamesarealreadytaken (talk) 00:05, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

Perhaps a distilled/consolidated version of the "Birther legislation" section could be rolled into Natural-born-citizen clause#Barack Obama and the article title (page) redirected to the President of the United States#Eligibility. Drdpw (talk) 02:56, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

"Birther" is a pejorative; WP:NPOV dictates avoid using it in the article unnecessarily. There was an effort to ensure that "birther" appeared in various articles only in a direct quotation, but I've seen some non-quotation creep in various articles. --Weazie (talk) 20:14, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

OK, now we've got some basis for discussing what the best thing is to do with this and associated articles. Let's keep discussing. Just please don't go imposing your own version on the page again without a consensus of other editors, or else you're likely to get blocked for edit-warring (WP:EW).

A question of my own here, following on the above: Is there any legislation (not just a recap of what the Constitution says) worth mentioning on the subject of presidential eligibility that is not directly related to Obama birtherism? — Richwales (no relation to Jimbo) 01:20, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

No there is not; all of the state-level legislative proposals—none of which became law—were advanced by those who asserted that Barack Obama was not a natural-born U.S. citizen, or by those who latched onto the issue because of their disdain for Obama. Drdpw (talk) 02:56, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

Having thought about the above discussion, I tend to agree it would be better to (1) synthesize this article down to a few paragraphs that could be remerged back into the original Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories article; and (2) delete this article. Mainly because the wide, sustained efforts to alter eligibility legislation in response to President Obama are interesting and noteworthy, but the list of failed legislative attempts is less so and could be summarized.

I think the first steps would be to start a discussion on talk page of the main article, to see if there are objections there to the remerge. And, assuming no objections, then to draft a proposed edit for what would go there. And then, finally, request deletion of this article. --Weazie (talk) 20:25, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

What to do with the presidential election birth certificate legislation information? I have a few thoughts related to your proposal Weazie:

• Given the nature and importance of this talk page discussion, deleting the article page itself (as opposed to redirecting it) isn't prudent as the talk page would be deleted as well, and history would be lost.
• As the Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories article is already fairly large, 207,737 bytes as of its most recent edit on June 9, 2020, perhaps a better place to nest the synthesized paragraphs from this article would be in the Barack Obama section of the related and smaller Natural-born-citizen clause article, 142,071 bytes as of June 9, 2020.
• I seems to me that the first steps here are for someone to produce a draft text and then post it in a new discussion thread, and also to note the discussion on the talk pages of the above-noted articles.

Cheers. Drdpw (talk) 22:08, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

The Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories article already is long, yet I'm (reluctantly) suggesting that it be enlarged. But I don't think the information here belongs in the Natural-born-citizen clause article because there was an effort to focus that article on the legal concepts, and to minimize discussions about the specifics facts surrounding each candidate. Moreover, that article focuses on a specific clause of the U.S. Constitution; this article chronicles efforts mostly directed at the state level.

The concerns about proper archiving are reasonable; maybe the solution is simply to substantially trim this article. --Weazie (talk) 22:27, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

Perhaps after moving / removing the conspiracy info, this article could focus on how the relevant requirements in the constitution were justfied and how they have changed / how changes were justified. I agree that the actual rules for the requirements set by various states should be left in and perhaps a paragraph about Obama's election conspiracies that pushed for these laws but the article focuses entirely on Obama and birtherism at the moment. It makes it seem like this page has been politically hijacked but honestly you all seem reasonable. Can we get some movement on this? We're quickly headed into the election and the focus (or maybe the title) of this article should have been fixed long ago. Cyrus40540057 (talk) 18:25, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

I added back a slimmed down version of the section on Posey's bill. Its singular removal wasn't consistent with any of the above-stated goals. Weazie (talk) 18:52, 22 November 2020 (UTC)