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Erase Obama From the Ballot? Arizona Official Says Maybe

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Posted on May 18, 2012

Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett, shown here campaigning for Mitt Romney this year, is trying to verify the existence of Obama’s birth certificate.

Despite claiming he does not believe in the birther conspiracy theory, Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett has threatened to keep Obama off the state’s general election ballot if he can’t verify the president was born in Hawaii.

“I’m not a birther. I believe the president was born in Hawaii—or at least I hope he was,” Bennett told KFYI radio host Mike Broomhead on Thursday. “But my responsibility as secretary of state is to make sure that the ballots in Arizona are correct and that those people whose names are on the ballot have met the qualifications for the office they are seeking.”

Bennett, who is preparing to run for Arizona governor in 2014, claimed the move is not meant to appease birthers in the state ahead of that election.

Bennett said he has petitioned the state to verify the existence of Obama’s long-form birth certificate, and that his request has gone unanswered for eight weeks. The White House released Obama’s long-form birth certificate last year. Still, that doesn’t seem to have satisfied the legion of conspiracy theorists who continue to believe the president was born elsewhere. —TEB

The Huffington Post:

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Bennett’s move is just the latest birther bustle in Arizona, which has been a hotbed for Obama eligibility conspiracy theories over the past few years. Clamor over a bill meant to address the issue was temporarily silenced last year when Gov. Jan Brewer (R) vetoed the measure, calling it “a bridge too far.”

Birthers returned with a vengeance this year, however, first emerging with an “investigation” carried out by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who had determined that there was reasonable cause to believe that Obama’s birth certificate was a forgery.

In the subsequent legislative session, a state GOP lawmaker reintroduced her failed birther bill.

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By EL ZORRO, May 22, 2012 at 11:22 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

I can see that a lot of people in this blog are collecting food stamps and drink
fluoridated water… this is a FACT…1991: Authentic original promotional Acton &
Dystel brochure promotes Obama as the “born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia
and Hawaii” author of the never-produced book “Journeys in Black and White,” the
pre-cursor to Obama’s autobiography, “Dreams of My Father.”. We have an anti-
american USURPER in the White House, who got there by virtue of FORGED birth
certificate and invalid SOCIAL SECURITY, issue to another individual in another
State, if you give a false social security information or false social security number
when filing your tax or any other claim, you could be arrested for fraud, Obama
should be arrested.

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americanme's avatar

By americanme, May 22, 2012 at 2:32 pm Link to this comment

Voting is for suckers.

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By Margaret Currey, May 22, 2012 at 4:26 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

How come if Obama was not born in the U.S. how did he get on the AZ ballot the last time he ran.

AZ has said he was born there, there was an anouncement in the paper, what do these people want, I will tell you they want to illegally remove Obama from the ballot and hope that the Mormon Romney will win.

And that is when this country will really fall apart, the Bush tax cuts are suppose to expire, but the republicians want them to go on forever, the rich want to take from the middle americans as long as they can. 

And then after all the talk which is an appeasement to the looney right, I hope all vote for Obama because he is not a flop flopper.

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By Marian Griffith, May 20, 2012 at 2:31 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

@hawkny

—“Withdraw their statehood status and return them to the status of territory”.—

Or, if there really is that large a proportion of the people there who believe in that conspiracy theory in spite of being given plenty of evidence to the contrary, we should bypass the territory stage and straight for a status of Asylum?

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By Denise Mahar, May 20, 2012 at 8:50 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

Hey now, I am from Arizona and we are not all crazy, lol, but it does seem like Arizona HAS baked the brains of our politicians, I never wanted to be embarrassed that I came from Arizona, but here I am, apologizing for my state, yeesh. Not all Arizonans are like these knuckleheads. AND there are pockets of resistance, Flagstaff, Tucson, and even a few other small cities like Jerome, are left leaners. I just hope that Arizonans wake up and smell the heat, before its to late, sigh…. .

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By gerard, May 19, 2012 at 5:32 pm Link to this comment

(Sarcastic laugh) Hold on here, folks.  This guy is just doing his bit to help Homeland Security keep our white Christian nation safe from the Mongrel Hordes.(Sacrastic laugh)

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By PatrickHenry, May 19, 2012 at 4:37 pm Link to this comment

Just another member of the John McCain sour grapes club.

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By hawkny, May 19, 2012 at 1:20 pm Link to this comment

We are talking about a sitting president here!

If Arizona proceeds to deny Mr. Obama, who is running for reelection, on
the state’s ballot, I say:

“Withdraw their statehood status and return them to the status of
territory”.

Doing so would allow the Federal government to replace the sitting
governor of Arizona with one who is federally designated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territories_of_the_United_States

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By americanme, May 19, 2012 at 10:42 am Link to this comment

Arizona—land of braindead white oldsters attached to oxygen tanks sitting in trailers waiting to die.

Where the water that’s become a planetary scarcity is wasted on thousands of acres of golf courses for those few oldsters not quite ready to die but attached to portable oxygen tanks anyway to ride in their golf carts from one lie of the ball to another.

Where the collective IQ has slipped down into the low double digits and is only maintained at that level by the undocumented workers that the whites are deporting.  When they are all deported the collective IQ of Arizona will be in single digits.

I mean, let’s get real here:  What would you expect folks like that to do with a black candidate—even a “pretend” black candidate?

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By bramdruckman, May 19, 2012 at 10:26 am Link to this comment

Other than the Grand Canyon and a few golf courses I see little reason for Arizona
remaining part of the United States. Let them secede or let us partition them from
the other 49 states and allow them to establish their own country with their own
government and laws. They could become like S. Africa once was with a policy of
apartheid promoting and maintaining white ascendancy or a totally closed nation
like N. Korea or a lawless one like Somalia or even a new monarchy with kings and
queens. In any event, they would be free to go their own way and we would free of
them forever.

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By berniem, May 19, 2012 at 9:35 am Link to this comment

Obama will be erased from my ballot but not for any of the insane reasons posited by the reactionary half-wits. No, I’l not vote for Obama because bush/cheney are free and Bradley Manning & Tim DeChristopher are not, Wall St. continues to exist as a criminal wasteland, NDAA, card check reversal, no public option or single payer health care , continued bush-era constitutional violatons, endless war and constant threats of more, asassinations W/O due process, indiscriminate drone attacks, betrayal of the middle class, and an overall aura of spinelessness and complicity in this nation’s descent into authoritarian fascism! Boycott elections! Why vote when there is no one to vote for who is not already bought and paid for by those who are comitted to the repression of the majority of our citizens? Pity the t-baggers who are too intolerant, greedy, and just plain stupid to realize that they are in fact the agents of their own demise!

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By Big B, May 19, 2012 at 8:41 am Link to this comment

What happened to the Arizona of my youth? The warm and dry retirement destination for old east coast asthmatics?

Do you suppose their inhalers cause a kind of group insanity?

Or is Arizona just preparing to be the seat for a new american confederate government?

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By cinjohn, May 19, 2012 at 5:24 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

As my father used to say regarding stupid people: “Son, you can’t uncook a steak.”

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By "G"utless "W"itless Hitler, May 19, 2012 at 3:03 am Link to this comment

Much like the birthers’ problem with verifying Obama’s
place of birth, I’m having a problem verifying that Ken
Bennett is not mentally incompetent.  Absence of
evidence is not evidence of absence, after all. 
However, every time he opens his idiotic Mormon-
accountant mouth, I’m moved a little closer to a
conclusion.

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prisnersdilema's avatar

By prisnersdilema, May 18, 2012 at 10:00 pm Link to this comment

Why not, Obama has all the depth of a pencil smudge anyway?

Looks like Arizona has delusions of grandeur, so they just might try it, maybe they
will be the first break away state, in the New American Republic of Christian
America….

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By ghostofwatergate, May 18, 2012 at 8:05 pm Link to this comment

The Constitution says in Article 4, Section 1, that when Hawaii says it has a birth certificate that Arizona is supposed to salute and say, “Good enough.”

“Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.”

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By kipster, May 18, 2012 at 7:43 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

is this stuff really happening? its 1952 in America again. Birthers, fear of Sharia
law, Joe MacCarthy (Alan Keyes) v. Communism, Frank Gaffney, bigotry. Pat
Robertson, birth control, islamaphobia…what is happening here?!? i thought we
were better than this!

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By Cyrus, May 18, 2012 at 3:48 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

Well, another sign of the times-is there anyone still surprised by how insane our media, culture, and politics have become since the left wing wimps elected Bush (by of course supporting that ex-consumer advocate who had a slightly inflated opinion of himself) Anyways just wants one more chance to say ” Thank you, Ralphie”

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By afs, May 18, 2012 at 3:42 pm Link to this comment

Looks like too much sun will bake your brain.

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By diamond, May 18, 2012 at 2:59 pm Link to this comment

Jesus. What is it in the water in Arizona that makes the politicians there as mad as cut snakes? In ‘Armed Madhouse’ Greg Palast included a photo of a precinct poll tape from the 2004 election that didn’t even have John Kerry listed as a candidate in the election. This moron Bennett’s just getting in early and announcing that they intend to steal the election by any means, including illegal ones, if necessary. People like him are scary in an imbecilic way and they make America the laughing stock of the world.

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