On December 22, Democratic presidential candidate Cenk Uygur, who was born in Turkey but who has lived in the United States since the age of eight, filed a federal lawsuit to get on the South Carolina Democratic presidential primary. Uygur v South Carolina and McMaster, 3:23cv-6879. He is suing the Elections Commission and also the South Carolina Democratic Party, which cashed his filing fee for $20,000 but then refused to accept him as a candidate.
He argues that the 14th amendment implicitly repealed the part of Section Two that says a candidate must be a natural-born citizen in order to hold the office of President or Vice-President. He also argues that regardless of that, he should be placed on the ballot even if he doesn’t meet the constitutional qualifications. He is on the ballot in four other states, and he was permitted to take out petition blanks in Rhode Island.
Here is his Complaint.
He is obviously not a Natural Born Citizen so he should not be on the ballot for a presidential primary.
I’m sympathetic to the part about being listed even though he can’t take office.
The 14th amendment…ugh. I don’t even want to know. That amendment was never properly adopted and causes trouble in so many ways. Just declare it null and void already.
At the very least. They owe him his money back.
The Complaint has some incorrect information about sore loser laws in presidential elections. It says they are banned in 47 states. That is grossly inaccurate. It’s more like six states.
Uygur and his show have never been known for accurate information.
What a fucking retard. Surprised he isn’t buddies with AZ.
I see no point in putting him on the ballot for an office which he is not legally eligible to hold.
The point is that votes belong to voters, regardless of the chances of their preferred candidates taking office.
For some people a vote is a way to select a politician, so there’s no point in having fringe or “spoiler” candidates who can’t win on the ballot.
For others, it’s a means of expressing an opinion or making a symbolic point, regardless of chances of winning, whether those be 0.0001% or 0.0%.
Some people vote for dead people, animals, fictional characters etc with the full knowledge that their “candidates” can’t take office. If that’s how they want to use their vote it should be their right.
If there’s enough support to overcome whatever the ballot access hurdle is, there’s no reason not to list their choice, just to move to the next highest plurality winner or substitute candidate or new elections to fill vacancy if they win.
Of course, it would be even better if elections were in person, without ballots, by on the record standing count, but that’s a separate issue.
Suppose the best, or only available, spokesperson for a particular ideology or viewpoint isn’t eligible. So what? They don’t expect to win office anyway . That’s not why they’re running and that’s not why any but the most delusional of voters vote for them.
There’s no reason they shouldn’t have their voice heard and make their point, regardless of what anyone else thinks about the wisdom of that.
In the case of president in particular there’s also the fact that their name is just the ballot label for a slate of convention delegates or collegiate electors. Only congress has the power to judge the qualifications of a candidate upon receiving the votes of electors.
Party conventions can have their own rules for that.
I agree with Mike on the fact that the 14th Amendment was never properly ratified.
Do you disagree with other parts, if so why?
Cenk the slimy lawyer is playing the discrimination card here. Unfortunately he might get fairly far with this ruse. But not far enough. The original intent definition of “natural-born citizen” is found in Emer de Vattel’s “Law of Nations (1758),” Chapter XIX (page 245 of the following link) https://files.libertyfund.org/files/2246/Vattel_1519_LFeBk.pdf
“The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in
the country, of parents who are citizens. As the society cannot exist and
perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of the citizens, those
children naturally follow the condition of their fathers,…”
That’s retarded. In 1758 there was no way to know who the real father was. Whatever you may or may not say about Jews, at least they knew to keep it matrilineal for that exact reason.
Meh. Dr Vattel is wrong. Those who choose to come to a country, or who have experienced the contrast with places they had to flee, are often more fervently patriotic than those who just happened to be born there and often don’t appreciate what they have and other people might kill, die, and go to all sorts of trouble and inconvenience to get, or get for their children.
Those advantages are like water to fish to them, frequently taken for granted. They may even see the grass as greener on another side, failing to appreciate the downsides there, having not experienced the contrast for themselves. Those who have are frequently far more appreciative.
A chosen identity is often far more fervent than an inherited one. This is equally true for converts to a religious or ideological cause, etc.
Further, why would anyone suppose that their children, who barely if at all remember living in any other country, any less American than those born here? They’d be far more foreigners in the country of birth. And by what process does a child born just after his or her parents receive citizenship become more naturally American than a sibling born of the same parents a year earlier?
Look at all the American born traitors over the years, including our current president . Even the founders of this country were traitors from the mother country’s perspective.
That’s not to say Uygur is a patriot. He’s a POS. But there are plenty of those who are natural born citizens.
Rather than archaic natural born citizen requirements, their purpose would be better served by :
much more vigorous border enforcement, much more rigorous admission, residence and naturalization processes ; ending anchor baby and chain migration; a return to the remain in Mexico and other Trump policies; orders of magnitude more vigorous deportation of illegals; far more active efforts against foreign espionage, foreign and immigrant criminal organizations; finishing the wall; patriotic education; rooting out alien ideologies like communism, fascism and jihadism; universal and heavily enforced eVerify; no welfare magnet for immigration; empowering all citizens to arrest illegals; bounties for bringing them in, alive or dead; allowing legally hunting them like animals; lower minimum wages and other reduced rights for non citizens: etc.
Well let’s see. John McCane III was born in the Republic of Panama to parents that never were married prior to his birth, viz., out of wedlock. He never was a US Citizen. Ìs he doing a “McCain”?
His father was American. Allegedly.
Being that 1758 precedes the 1787 date of the U.S. Constitution, Vattel’s definition is clearly the original intent definition. George Washington (presided over the Convention) was a student of Vattel and his copy of the book was famously returned 221 years late (https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64J4EG/). The U.S. Constitution is a legal document which must be interpreted using the common usage definitions of words at the time it was written. Say all you want about it being archaic, but it is what it is and IS the law of the land. There is a clear amendment procedure for changing it if you so desire.
I never argue law ,I’m arguing policy. Whether my policy ideas are politically realistic or not at present is a different question entirely. Generally, they’re not, so I’m more concerned with the realm of ideas.
Laws are one thing. Enforcement is another. Obama was obviously born in Africa, not Hawaii, for example. Just as you exhort me to change laws – a waste of time at present – I can tell you to see what you can do about enforcing your interpretation. Chances are we’re equally out of luck.
So, instead of telling me what the laws are, it would be more interesting if you can point out any errors you see in my logic and demonstrate why I’m wrong, if you think I am.
NOOOO FOREIGN CONNECTION WITH USA PREZ — ESP AS C-I-C
IE USA CITIZEN FATHER- NBC OR NATURALIZED.
PLACE OF BIRTH MEANS ZERO — REGARDLESS OF ALL THE KIDS BORN IN USA HAVING SOUTH OF BORDER FATHERS
I am not a lawyer and this is long…apologies.
As I understand it, our laws are complicated which is why lawyers tend to specialize. I didn’t consult a personal injury lawyer when I had to evict my tenant, for instance. I read his brief and I fail to see where his 1st, 5th, and 14th amendment rights are being violated by adhering to the Article 2 requirement that a person must be a natural born citizen to be Pres. or VP. When he announced his candidacy, many people told him that he did not meet the requirements. The 1st and 5th are applicable to anyone, even non-citizens. The 14th was put in place after the Civil War and during reconstruction. It was not intended as a way to replace the requirements in Article 2. It further clarified requirements for being an officer of the government. So an addition rather than a replacement. Cenk knows this. Also, to add to the complexity, every State has the right to manage their own elections. Political Parties also manage the process for choosing their candidate for the General election. The Libertarian Party, for instance, has a primary election here in CA yet they choose their candidate at their convention based on delegate choice rather than the voter’s choice. Many of the CA delegates were not CA residents. This is a Civil case between Cenk and the SC Dems.
Now, as to the bit I found offensive because it has been debated and resolved.
John McCain’s father was an admiral in the U.S. Navy who was stationed in Panama in 1936, when McCain was born. Both of his parents were US Citizens at the time of his birth. Additionally, is it not true that military bases and embassies are considered American soil even if they are located outside the country’s borders? If not then we are essentially punishing all military, civilian and diplomatic corps personnel who do not have a choice of where they are assigned.
—- Personal Side Note: My ex was in the Air Force when I had my first child. We were in the states. I had a conversation with my doctor at the time because my ex was supposed to have been stationed in Germany. I mentioned that I was glad I had my son in the states instead of Germany because he would still be able to run for President some day. (hey, I was 20 and not too worldly) My doctor was the one who told me that even if we were in Germany, my son would be considered a naturally born citizen. He was an officer so I kinda trusted him.
Barack Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, moved to Honolulu, Hawaii from Seattle in 1960 with her parents who went there seeking new opportunities. She had just graduated from High School. She enrolled in the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She met Barack Obama Sr. who also attended the University. She was 3 months pregnant when they were married. She gave birth to Barack in Honolulu. She was never in Africa. She did spend time in Indonesia after she completed her degree.
—- Personal Side Note: I have a relative who was born in Kona, Hawaii. He lived there until he joined the US Navy. Even though he retired from both the Navy and as a civilian government employee at McClellan Field, he did not have an official Birth Certificate. The building in Kona where all the records were stored had burned down.
Put simply.. he has to be BORN in the US to be a candidate. I will agree that he should get the money back, but he is not eligible since he moved into the US at age 8.
WHAT WAS THE NATION-STATE STATUS OF OBAMA’S FATHER THE SECOND THAT OBAMA WAS BORN ???
IE OBAMA’S FATHER WAS CITIZEN/SUBJECT OF WHAT NATION-STATE ???
Obama was born in Kenya.
AZ- a guy who was laughed out of court many times interpretations the Constitution. LOL
“The building in Kona where all the records were stored had burned down.” – Obama burned it down to cover up his birth in Kenya to the Ooga Booga tribe.
The 2008 election was such a farce.
We had Obongo who was ineligible because he was born in the wilds of Kenya to multiple fathers after a jungle gang bang involving Lena Dunham who was there only for sex tourism.
We had McCane who was born out of wedlock in Panama. You know, like the Van Halen song. He then graduated last in his class, killed all those people in the aircraft carrier explosion because he was showing off, and then got caught by the Viet Kong and gave them all the info and intel he had, leading to the deaths of thousands of America’s best in the jungles. He then came home and abandoned his wife and married that gold digging whore Sidney.
Bob Barr was the eligible candidate who received the most votes. A court should have thrown out everything Obongo did and declared Bob Barr the president. I always liked Bob Barr’s cool mustache. Much better than the gay mustache of that bitch John Bolten.
Both parents of John McCain III at his birth in the Republic of Panana were US Citizens. However he was born out of wedlock, therefore he did not qualify to become a US Citizen at birth. He was never naturalized. Therefore he was a Citizen of the Republic of Panama all his life.
I have researched and replied to recent comments below, none of which is relevant to the issue of Cenk Uygur not meeting the minimum requirements, as laid out in our Constitution, to hold the office of Pres. or VP. The Constitution is a living document which contains within it how to update and correct it. I am a woman and have only had the right to vote for a scant 100 years, even though I have an ancestor who fought in the Revolutionary War. So suck it up, or be the change you want to happen. I love a good debate. There is a distinction between Facts and Opinions. I get bored with people who are unable or unwilling to at least start at the basic facts and are able to admit their opinions or biases. Seeing adults resort to schoolyard taunts like “Ooga Booga tribe” and “Obongo” saddens me. Also, as a Californian I wish we went by the popular vote. The last 3 Republican Presidents lost the popular vote yet they won the electoral college.
BTW: In the 2008 Presidential election,
Barack Obama[D] won the popular vote with 69,498,516 52.93%
Bob Barr[L] came in 4th with 523,715 0.40%
The top 3 candidates, Barack Obama, John McCain, and Ralph Nader would have had to be disqualified for Bob Barr to win. This is actually a good argument for why unqualified candidates should not be allowed to progress to the General election. Nullifying 99% of the votes cast is ridiculous, No?
—— For clarification ———–
AZ said: IE OBAMA’S FATHER WAS CITIZEN/SUBJECT OF WHAT NATION-STATE ???
Barack Obama Sr. was a Citizen of Kenya and in Hawaii attending University. AFAIK, The Constitution never mentions anything about foreign sourced swimmers. Pres. Obama was born in an American State and his mother was a Naturally Born Citizen of the USA.
CP fan said: “The building in Kona where all the records were stored had burned down.” – Obama burned it down to cover up his birth in Kenya to the Ooga Booga tribe.
Oh, Bless your heart. I mentioned my relative was born in Kona, pre-staehood. He was born in 1900. The building burned down around 1930, before all essential records went to the Capitol in Honolulu. Amusing that you would so nakedly show the depth of your racism.
For some odd reason, some of you have said that John McCain III was born out of wedlock. This is patently false.
John S. McCain Jr. married Roberta Wright in 1933. They met while he was stationed in Long Beach on the Oklahoma and she was a freshman at USC. Her mother objected to Roberta dating a “sailor” so they eloped. They had their first child, Jean Alexandra “Sandy” McCain (1934−2019) at Coco Solo Naval Air Station in the Panama Canal Zone. 2 years later, they welcomed John Sidney McCain III (1936-2018) at the same location. Their 3rd child Joseph Pickney McCain II was born at Naval Submarine Base in New London, Conn. in 1942. He is 81 and still alive.
Witness of Crimes said: He then came home and abandoned his wife and married that gold digging whore Sidney.
He didn’t “abandon” his wife after he came home from Vietnam. He was redeployed in 1973 while she stayed home and he was quite unfaithful to her. When he met Cindy (not Sidney. His daughter with his first wife was named Sidney.) Lou Hensley in 1979, they started dating and he requested a divorce which his wife agreed to. The settlement included two houses, and financial support for her ongoing medical treatments due to her 1969 car accident. Cindy’s father had founded a large beer distributorship so they had a prenuptial agreement to protect HER wealth. They married in 1980 and kept their finances separate.
Additionally, the other BS about how John McCain “killed all those people in the aircraft carrier explosion because he was showing off” is a reference to the Forrestal disaster, July 29, 1967. While he was waiting on the flight deck for his turn to launch, a Zuni missile accidentally fired from another aircraft. It is unclear whether his plane or the one next to him was struck. Either way it triggered a fire and a series of bomb and missile explosions that killed 134 sailors. He barely lived through it. He went back into combat on another carrier.
As far as him committing treason which resulted in other soldiers being killed, this is false. He had injuries from his crash and being tortured. At one point he offered them info in exchange for medical care. He didn’t keep his word, yet later he did reveal info about his ship and squadron, which would not have any effect on the ground troops. It was the Vietnam War for f”s sake. My uncle was in that war in the Marines. I remember how a knock at the door would give my grandmother anxiety because she was sure he had died. War is hell and no one knows what they would do in the same situation, regardless of training or integrity. He was forced to sign a confession that he was a war criminal. There is no evidence that he ever gave them anything of value, nor that he was pardoned by Nixon for treason.
I really have to wonder why, when we have present day issues and atrocities, people continue to hold on to these debunked stories which have no current value.
Thank you Shivany for debunking all those racists especially that rat Siedenberg, a Zionist who help the modern day Brutus (Markham Robinson) betray the modern day Caesar (Don Grundmann) in the worst display of political betrayal in our times, back in 2008. It’s all chronicled at theCorruptionofAlanKeyes.com
The actual website is TheCorruptionofAlanKeyes.blogspot.com
Hi Shivany. You are in amazing shape for 121 years old . I’ve checked with my client, and he says you are not among his demons. You must either be an angel or a space alien. I’ll take your comments piecemeal; I hope you won’t mind. My replies over the course of several upcoming comments.
1st @ Shivany: there’s nothing to apologize for. I’m not an actual lawyer either, just a devil’s advocate. It’s refreshing to see a commenter not suffer from attention deficit disorder. Most people here generally just exchange slogans in a glib way and repeat themselves endlessly for reasons which completely escape me.
I agree laws are way too complicated. There’s a guy who comments here, Maxim Maximovich Maximov from Moscow, Russia, who is a true genius. He says all laws need to be pared down to something shorter than the constitution, which all adults and older children could be reasonably expected to know, memorize, and understand. I think his system would get rid of all lawyers. Instead, we would have elected law enforcement officers who would simultaneously serve as judge, jury, and punisher/executioner.
2nd @ Shivany: I agree that Uygur does not meet the requirements to be president. But I think he does to be a candidate for president ; see Mike’s comments way above as to why.
3rd, to my knowledge, McCain was born off base, in Panama. His alleged father was a natural born American, and his mother was a Panamanian born naturalized US citizen, correct?
Others can explain how that does or doesn’t make him a natural born citizen. To my knowledge, he was a citizen who was born of US citizen parents, presumably conceived in the normal way, and delivered through the birth canal, not the Panama Canal.
To me, it’s more important to ask whether he was a loyal American. I think that’s the real intent of the natural born citizen clause. As I explained earlier above, I don’t think that clause has proven to be the best way to achieve its intended purposes. I explained why and proposed some alternatives.
I don’t think he was a loyal American in 2008. I believe he was turned into a Manchurian candidate by his Vietnamese interrogators.
Obama was certainly not a loyal American, even if the Hawaiian birth story was true, but I don’t think it was. There are too many facts that point to him being born in Africa, and that alleged birth certificate they dragged up after months and months didn’t even look real.
I haven’t seen the case made that Nader was not natural born, even if he does sometimes come across as having been hatched. More in a bit.
Michael Cole: put simply, he’s ineligible to be President, not to be a candidate. Details around start of discussion above .
Other CP fan, the sources I am finding is that Obama is of the Luo tribe. I agree that the preponderance of evidence indicates both Obama Sr and Obama Jr were born in Kenya. Furthermore, my research does not show an Ooga Booga tribe in Kenya or anywhere in Africa.
Witness,
I’m not sure where you learned biology or sex ed, but a child only has one biological father, even when conceived during a gang bang.
Lena Dunham could have received ejaculations from every male of the Luo tribe in the course of a weeklong marathon session into her vagina, but only one of them could have fertilized the egg that would produce a zygote that would go on to become a child.
In the case of Ann Dunham, I have not seen anything that says she visited Africa for the conception. I’ve only seen the case made that she went there for the delivery, probably because it has cultural importance to the Luo where the child is born, or perhaps for other reasons.
Was Nadir ineligible, and if so, why?
Mark Seidenberg, why would his parents have had to been married?
Shivany, 2nd round, part1:
I don’t think anyone here has alleged that Uygur is eligible to hold the office. Some of us think he should nevertheless be eligible to have his name used as a label for a slate of delegates to a convention in a primary or for a slate of electors for the electoral college in the general election.
Part 2: if that’s how Californians feel, why not leave the union? I think both most people in California and most people outside California would be happier.
Getting rid of the electoral college would alter the fundamental design of the union as a compact of states. Instead, where I think we began to go wrong as a country when it comes to presidential elections was in having the electors chosen by popular vote, rather than by state legislatures. I think we need to go back to having them chosen by state legislatures, so there could never be such a fundamental misconception as a “national popular vote” to begin with.
Your real world illustration, although exaggerated, shows why. The last two (not three) Republican presidents were elected thanks only to the electoral college. It would have been a disaster of unprecedented proportions of their demon rat opponents had been chosen instead. I don’t think any of us would even he here to have this conversation.
The union was a compromise between low population, rural states and higher population states containing major cities. The electoral college and Senate preserve the power of rural, low population areas, which has already been far too weakened in other ways.
Giving all the power to urban, large population concentrations would leave conservative, rural areas with no power at all. Imagine if we’d had Demon rat presidents nonstop the last 23 years, nominating all the supreme court justices and lower level federal judiciary, as well as appointing all the federal department heads.
Quite aside from the extreme likelihood of WWIII which would make all this moot, or the nightmare of how they would have reacted to 9/11 or covid, imagine all the horrible federal court rulings and bureaucratic edicts we’d be living under now.
I think we’d have had a real civil war by now, not what propaganda calls our civil war (in reality, an unsuccessful war for southern independence or second American revolution). The side most Californians would have sided with wouldn’t have won. Our side has most of the guns and numbers . We grow most of the food. The cities need the countryside more than the other way around.
In other words: be careful what you wish for, lest you get it.
I don’t wish for war. I hope to avoid it . But the demon rat grabs for total power, such as getting rid of the electoral college, would make war inevitable, were they to succeed.
Part 3
I disagree that judging candidates unqualified nullifies the election.
There could be a number of ways to handle this, ranging from letting their electors pick a replacement, to going with their VP candidate if deemed eligible, to holding a new election, to letting the disqualified candidate himself choose a successor.
Going with the next highest vote getting slate of electors might be one possible solution, but far from the only one.
In any case, the onus for judging the validity of electoral votes is clearly supposed to be on congress, and it seems to me that anything which alters this design and leaves it up to a hodge podge of state and federal election bureaucrats and courts alters the design in fundamental ways that ought not be fooled with.
It’s especially galling when we are talking about candidates who have no expectations of winning, and whose voters don’t expect them to win. Why shouldn’t the people who want to vote for Uygur be allowed their say? He won’t be elected president this year, so I don’t see why his eligibility to take the oath of office or lack thereof should matter as far as the people who want to make whatever statement they want to make by casting a vote for him go.
Part 4
Thanks for the correction regards Senator McCain’s parents having been married. As I indicated earlier, I was unclear why that would have mattered either way. He was a bastard in other ways, even if not liberally, and I saw nothing in the constitutional text whereby the marriage status of a citizen’s parents make him natural born or otherwise.
I’m not knowledgeable enough about the McCain marriages, divorces, or missile incident to wade into that. I don’t see how any of it matters as far as his constitutional eligibility.
His treason in Vietnam is a matter many who were imprisoned with him attested to. It’s true he was injured, tortured, and further injured through torture. But I do believe the enemy turned him and that he was never a loyal American after that.
Regardless, that also does not have anything to do with his constitutional eligibility, as far as natural born citizenship. That’s why I said earlier in the discussion, natural born citizenship is a poor proxy for being a loyal American.
I don’t know if you’re still reading,but there it is. I’ve tried to reply to all your points in good faith and acknowledged where I think you are correct.
Balls in your court ma’am.
P.s. I hope you’re not put off by the dig about 121 years old. It was merely a joke based on your carelessly worded statement that you’ve had the right to vote for 100 years. We both understand what you actually meant, and I hope you understand the anti-collectivist point of the ribbing. In reality, it’s neither my business not my concern how old you actually are or what you actually look like.
SHIVANY,
You are not correct. The event in TJ was not a marriage, because it took place in a bar and not in the office of the civil registry. This can be confirmed in the public record in the state of New Mexico.
That doesn’t answer why their marriage status would have been of any consequence.