On March 20, Larry Klayman filed a lawsuit in Leon County, Florida Circuit Court. The case is Voeltz v Obama. Another defendant is Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner. The lawsuit urges the state to keep President Obama off the November 2012 ballot on the grounds that he does not meet the constitutional qualifications. The complaint argues that “natural-born citizen” means the child of an adult U.S. citizen, and also disputes the authenticity of the long-form birth certificate the President released last year. Here is the seven-page complaint.
Florida is one of the states that has a policy of not printing presidential candidates’ names on the general election ballot if the candidate does not meet the constitutional qualifications. For example, in 2008, the Socialist Workers Party presidential candidate, Roger Calero, did not meet the constitutional qualifications. States that nevertheless printed his name on the November 2008 ballot, or accepted him as a declared write-in candidate, are Connecticut, Delaware, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Vermont, and Washington. The Socialist Workers Party was on the ballot in Florida in 2008 but the state would not print Calero’s name, so the SWP used a stand-in, James Harris, in Florida and certain other states.
