Certification submitted by Hawaii Democrats was a carefully-worded fraud. And national Dems had to have known.
I'd heard talk about the story below around 2010 but hadn't seen the details until today. If true, the implications are chilling:
Each state's political parties are required by the laws of their state to send the names of their party's presidential and vp candidates to state election officials at least two months before the election. This submittal is called an "official certificate of nomination."
These have two purposes: They officially notify state election officials what names the party wants on the ballot. And virtually all states also require that the parties certify that each candidate meets the provisions of the U.S. Constitution for holding the office for which the candidate is being nominated.
Hawaii is no exception, and the exact requirements are specified in Hawaii Revised Statutes 11-113 (c)(1)(B). (A copy of the relevant portion of that law is at the end of this post if you're skeptical.)
Officials of the Democratic Party of Hawaii were well aware of this requirement, and the OCONs for the two presidential elections before 2008--Gore-Lieberman in 2000 and Kerry-Edwards in 2004--both contained the following language:
But curiously, in 2008 the official certification sent by Hawaii's Democratic party to the Hawaii Election Commission used very different wording. See if you can spot the difference:
Now if Hawaii had just started this requirement in 2008--or if a plane crash had killed all the serving officers of the Democratic party after the last presidential election--it's barely possible that none of the top officials of the Democratic party would have known the language required by their own state law in the official certification of nomination. Obviously neither event happened.
So why the drastic change in wording?
No one is saying. Because no reporter has asked. (Nor is one likely to.)
But the official certification is in the files, and not only does the language not meet the statutory requirement, it is obviously radically different from that used in 2000 and 2004--specifically in omitting the crucial phrase that the Democratic party's candidates were "legally qualified to serve under the provisions of the United States Constitution."
So again, why did Democratic party officials change the language?
The first step in solving this mystery is for rational people to acknowledge that omitting the language required by statute, and substituting some legal-sounding but non-statutory wording, did NOT happen by accident. After all, Democratic officials had the examples of the last two elections sitting right in front of them. So the change had to have been deliberately planned.
Second: the language actually used in the official certification appears to be carefully worded to give the impression that it's conveying the same information as earlier letters of this type. The average reader almost certainly wouldn't realize that the language had been changed, and that the new wording didn't make the statutorily-required certification of eligibility.
Let's pause a moment here to summarize: This isn't a snit complaining that Democratic party officials of a tiny state failed to comply with their own state's election laws. If you think that, you're too stupid to breathe. The bombshell here is that the official documents on file show that national Democrats knew that for whatever reason, Obama didn't meet the requirements to hold office.
Step three: Why would anyone bother changing the wording of the certification in this way? Specifically, if both Democratic nominees were in fact constitutionally eligible to hold office, why not just use the same, statutorily-required language in the certification letter that the Hawaii Democratic party had used in the two previous elections?
The unavoidable, inescapable conclusion is that at least one of the Democratic nominees was *not* constitutionally qualified for the office. And that Hawaiian Democratic officials knew it. The carefully-crafted wording was their attempt to fast-ball it by everyone.
Even more shocking is that top Democratic party officials on the Democratic National Committee also had to have known that the Hawaiian Democratic party was not certifying--and could not certify--constitutional eligibility in their certification of nomination. Instead, both groups appear to have participated in a careful deception to submit a nominee they all knew did not meet the constitutional requirements to hold the office.
One other piece of documentary evidence strongly supports this theory:
After each state's political parties have certified to their state election commissions that their candidates meet the requirements to hold the office they're seeking, officials of the national party send every state a similar certification letter.
In past elections every state has received a copy of the same letter--all were identical.
Before the 2008 election the Democratic National Committee sent identical certification of nomination letters to 49 states, containing the following text:
So 49 states got the same letter from the DNC. But one state got a different letter. Can you guess which state got the odd one? Yep, the official certification the Democratic National Committee sent to Hawaii’s election commission is different from the ones sent to the other 49 states. It reads:
The fact that the DNC would send a different certification letter to Hawaii than it sent to the other 49 states is...curious. In fact it's a huge red flag. Someone did it deliberately--and the reason must have been a compelling. But what could it have been?
Consider the difference in the letters: The only difference between letter from the DNC to Hawaii and the nearly-identical letters to the other 49 state parties--is the phrase stating that the party's candidates for president and VP satisfy the constitutional requirements to hold those offices. The addition of this phrase--only in the letter to the Hawaiian party--strongly suggests that top officials of the Democratic National Committee knew that the official certification of nomination submitted by Hawaii Democrats had failed to certify that the party's candidates were constitutionally eligible--and were trying to patch this disqualifying defect.
But how could the Democratic National Committee certify Obama's constitutional eligibility when the letter from the Democratic party of Hawaii--the state that allegedly has all his birth records--shows it was unable to so certify?
To put it another way: If the Democratic party of Hawaii was unable to confirm the candidate's constitutional eligibility--to the point that they refused to file a document falsely certifying the candidate--they would have quietly informed the national committee.
If the DNC had had documentation that would have proven such eligibility, they would obviously have given that information to the Hawaiian Democrats to resolve the matter. The fact that the state Democratic party instead was forced to file the "artfully worded" (that is, intentionally deceptive) "certification" letter shows that the national committee didn't share any such information with the state.
This leads to the obvious, inescapable conclusion that the DNC could not so certify. If the state where the candidate claims to have been born couldn't certify his eligibility, how could the DNC do so?
And yet, in the official letter from the Democratic National Committee to the Hawaii Election Commission, that's exactly what the DNC did.
A simple, logical explanation is that officials of the Hawaii Democratic party had advised top national Democratic officials--probably around convention time, if not before--that Hawaii couldn't certify Obama's eligibility. Obviously state Democratic party officials didn't want to be responsible for sinking the candidacy of the first half-black to be nominated for president. So rather than admit to the public that Obama had a problem, Hawaiian Democratic officials worked with key officials of the Democratic National Committee to create the workaround.
Again, this involved drafting the State certification letter so the statutorily-required language used in the two previous presidential elections was replaced with official-sounding boilerplate that didn't say a word about constitutional eligibility.
Then with the election just weeks away, House Speaker Pelosi would send a letter to Hawaii to remedy this alleged "oversight," by adding a single sentence to the *national* certification letter, claiming the party's candidates were constitutionally eligible.
At first glance this plot seems so outlandish, so brazen, as to be automatically discounted. But oddly, the plot actually didn't involve any risk, since Nancy Pelosi (who as ranking national Democrat at the time signed the certification letters from the Democratic National Committee to each state) could simply plead ignorance--the cover story would be that some nameless aide had assured her that Obama met all the constitutional requirements, and the single phrase added only to the letter sent to Hawaii was intended to remedy a dumb mistake by some low-level employee at the Hawaii Democratic party.
And if worst came to worst, Pelosi wasn't a resident of Hawaii and as Speaker of the House could almost certainly fend off any prosecution for a trivial, technical violation of some obscure state law that no one had ever heard of.
Simple. Elegant. Illegal as hell.
And there's a second factor--other than the obvious, huge motive of getting your candidate into the presidency--that would have hugely motivated top national Democrats to support the...uh..."workaround:" How utterly incompetent would all the top national Democrats have looked if their nominee made it all the way to the party's nomination for the nation's highest office before any of them bothered to ask if he was eligible to serve?
Not wanting to look stupid or incompetent is a huge and underrated motivator.
And as another notorious Democrat infamously said, "At this point, what difference could it possibly make?"
==
For reference, here's part of Hawaii Revised Statutes HRS §11-113; Presidential Ballots:
(c) All candidates for president and vice president of the United States shall be qualified for inclusion on the general election ballot under the following procedures:......
(1) In the case of candidates of political parties which have been qualified to place candidates on the primary and general election ballots, the appropriate official of those parties shall file a sworn application with the chief election officer not later than 4:30 p.m. on the sixtieth day prior to the general election, which shall include:
(A) The name and address of each of the two candidates;
(B) A statement that each candidate is legally qualified to serve under the provisions of the United States Constitution;
(C) A statement that the candidates are the duly chosen candidates of both the state and the national party, giving the time, place, and manner of the selection.
Each state's political parties are required by the laws of their state to send the names of their party's presidential and vp candidates to state election officials at least two months before the election. This submittal is called an "official certificate of nomination."
These have two purposes: They officially notify state election officials what names the party wants on the ballot. And virtually all states also require that the parties certify that each candidate meets the provisions of the U.S. Constitution for holding the office for which the candidate is being nominated.
Hawaii is no exception, and the exact requirements are specified in Hawaii Revised Statutes 11-113 (c)(1)(B). (A copy of the relevant portion of that law is at the end of this post if you're skeptical.)
Officials of the Democratic Party of Hawaii were well aware of this requirement, and the OCONs for the two presidential elections before 2008--Gore-Lieberman in 2000 and Kerry-Edwards in 2004--both contained the following language:
THIS IS TO CERTIFY that the following candidates for President and Vice President of the United States are legally qualified to serve under the provisions of the United States Constitution and are the duly chosen candidates of both the state and the national Democratic Parties by balloting at the Presidential Preference Poll and Caucus held in the State of Hawaii and by acclamation at the National Democratic Convention held in...Eexcept for the candidates' names, the language used in these certifications in 2000 and 2004 was identical.
But curiously, in 2008 the official certification sent by Hawaii's Democratic party to the Hawaii Election Commission used very different wording. See if you can spot the difference:
THIS IS TO CERTIFY that the following candidates for President and Vice President of the United States are legally qualified to serve under the provision of the national Democratic Parties balloting at the Presidential Preference Poll and Caucus held on February 19th, 2008 in the State of Hawaii and by acclamation at the National Democratic Convention held August 27, 2008 in Denver, Colorado.Why did officials of the Democratic party of Hawaii change the language of the official certification from that used in prior elections? More pointedly, why change it to language that didn't satisfy the state's own law? Hawaii Revised Statute 11-113 (c)(1)(B) specifically requires that for the Hawaii Election Commission to put a party's candidate on the ballot, the official certification of nomination must specifically state that each candidate is legally qualified under the provisions of the United States Constitution to hold the office being sought.
Now if Hawaii had just started this requirement in 2008--or if a plane crash had killed all the serving officers of the Democratic party after the last presidential election--it's barely possible that none of the top officials of the Democratic party would have known the language required by their own state law in the official certification of nomination. Obviously neither event happened.
So why the drastic change in wording?
No one is saying. Because no reporter has asked. (Nor is one likely to.)
But the official certification is in the files, and not only does the language not meet the statutory requirement, it is obviously radically different from that used in 2000 and 2004--specifically in omitting the crucial phrase that the Democratic party's candidates were "legally qualified to serve under the provisions of the United States Constitution."
So again, why did Democratic party officials change the language?
The first step in solving this mystery is for rational people to acknowledge that omitting the language required by statute, and substituting some legal-sounding but non-statutory wording, did NOT happen by accident. After all, Democratic officials had the examples of the last two elections sitting right in front of them. So the change had to have been deliberately planned.
Second: the language actually used in the official certification appears to be carefully worded to give the impression that it's conveying the same information as earlier letters of this type. The average reader almost certainly wouldn't realize that the language had been changed, and that the new wording didn't make the statutorily-required certification of eligibility.
Let's pause a moment here to summarize: This isn't a snit complaining that Democratic party officials of a tiny state failed to comply with their own state's election laws. If you think that, you're too stupid to breathe. The bombshell here is that the official documents on file show that national Democrats knew that for whatever reason, Obama didn't meet the requirements to hold office.
Step three: Why would anyone bother changing the wording of the certification in this way? Specifically, if both Democratic nominees were in fact constitutionally eligible to hold office, why not just use the same, statutorily-required language in the certification letter that the Hawaii Democratic party had used in the two previous elections?
The unavoidable, inescapable conclusion is that at least one of the Democratic nominees was *not* constitutionally qualified for the office. And that Hawaiian Democratic officials knew it. The carefully-crafted wording was their attempt to fast-ball it by everyone.
Even more shocking is that top Democratic party officials on the Democratic National Committee also had to have known that the Hawaiian Democratic party was not certifying--and could not certify--constitutional eligibility in their certification of nomination. Instead, both groups appear to have participated in a careful deception to submit a nominee they all knew did not meet the constitutional requirements to hold the office.
One other piece of documentary evidence strongly supports this theory:
After each state's political parties have certified to their state election commissions that their candidates meet the requirements to hold the office they're seeking, officials of the national party send every state a similar certification letter.
In past elections every state has received a copy of the same letter--all were identical.
Before the 2008 election the Democratic National Committee sent identical certification of nomination letters to 49 states, containing the following text:
THIS IS TO CERTIFY that at the National Convention of the Democratic Party of the United States of America, held in Denver, Colorado on August 25 though [sic] 28, 2008, the following were duly nominated as candidates of said Party for President and Vice President of the United States respectively.Notice this letter doesn't mention whether the party's candidates are Constitutionally eligible to hold those offices, because it isn't required to: the question of eligibility should already have been certified by each State party before the national letter arrived. In fact, no state requires a certification from a party's national committee--states can only task their own residents.
So 49 states got the same letter from the DNC. But one state got a different letter. Can you guess which state got the odd one? Yep, the official certification the Democratic National Committee sent to Hawaii’s election commission is different from the ones sent to the other 49 states. It reads:
THIS IS TO CERTIFY that at the National Convention of the Democratic Party of the United States of America, held in Denver, Colorado on August 25 though 28, 2008, the following were duly nominated as candidates of said Party for President and Vice President of the United States respectively and that the following candidates for President and Vice President of the United States are legally qualified to serve under the provisions of the United States Constitution.Notice that this version of the DNC's certification letter to Hawaii added an extra phrase not found in any of the others: After the word "respectively" the following phrase has been added:
...and that the following candidates for President and Vice President of the United States are legally qualified to serve under the provisions of the United States Constitution.
The fact that the DNC would send a different certification letter to Hawaii than it sent to the other 49 states is...curious. In fact it's a huge red flag. Someone did it deliberately--and the reason must have been a compelling. But what could it have been?
Consider the difference in the letters: The only difference between letter from the DNC to Hawaii and the nearly-identical letters to the other 49 state parties--is the phrase stating that the party's candidates for president and VP satisfy the constitutional requirements to hold those offices. The addition of this phrase--only in the letter to the Hawaiian party--strongly suggests that top officials of the Democratic National Committee knew that the official certification of nomination submitted by Hawaii Democrats had failed to certify that the party's candidates were constitutionally eligible--and were trying to patch this disqualifying defect.
But how could the Democratic National Committee certify Obama's constitutional eligibility when the letter from the Democratic party of Hawaii--the state that allegedly has all his birth records--shows it was unable to so certify?
To put it another way: If the Democratic party of Hawaii was unable to confirm the candidate's constitutional eligibility--to the point that they refused to file a document falsely certifying the candidate--they would have quietly informed the national committee.
If the DNC had had documentation that would have proven such eligibility, they would obviously have given that information to the Hawaiian Democrats to resolve the matter. The fact that the state Democratic party instead was forced to file the "artfully worded" (that is, intentionally deceptive) "certification" letter shows that the national committee didn't share any such information with the state.
This leads to the obvious, inescapable conclusion that the DNC could not so certify. If the state where the candidate claims to have been born couldn't certify his eligibility, how could the DNC do so?
And yet, in the official letter from the Democratic National Committee to the Hawaii Election Commission, that's exactly what the DNC did.
A simple, logical explanation is that officials of the Hawaii Democratic party had advised top national Democratic officials--probably around convention time, if not before--that Hawaii couldn't certify Obama's eligibility. Obviously state Democratic party officials didn't want to be responsible for sinking the candidacy of the first half-black to be nominated for president. So rather than admit to the public that Obama had a problem, Hawaiian Democratic officials worked with key officials of the Democratic National Committee to create the workaround.
Again, this involved drafting the State certification letter so the statutorily-required language used in the two previous presidential elections was replaced with official-sounding boilerplate that didn't say a word about constitutional eligibility.
Then with the election just weeks away, House Speaker Pelosi would send a letter to Hawaii to remedy this alleged "oversight," by adding a single sentence to the *national* certification letter, claiming the party's candidates were constitutionally eligible.
At first glance this plot seems so outlandish, so brazen, as to be automatically discounted. But oddly, the plot actually didn't involve any risk, since Nancy Pelosi (who as ranking national Democrat at the time signed the certification letters from the Democratic National Committee to each state) could simply plead ignorance--the cover story would be that some nameless aide had assured her that Obama met all the constitutional requirements, and the single phrase added only to the letter sent to Hawaii was intended to remedy a dumb mistake by some low-level employee at the Hawaii Democratic party.
And if worst came to worst, Pelosi wasn't a resident of Hawaii and as Speaker of the House could almost certainly fend off any prosecution for a trivial, technical violation of some obscure state law that no one had ever heard of.
Simple. Elegant. Illegal as hell.
And there's a second factor--other than the obvious, huge motive of getting your candidate into the presidency--that would have hugely motivated top national Democrats to support the...uh..."workaround:" How utterly incompetent would all the top national Democrats have looked if their nominee made it all the way to the party's nomination for the nation's highest office before any of them bothered to ask if he was eligible to serve?
Not wanting to look stupid or incompetent is a huge and underrated motivator.
And as another notorious Democrat infamously said, "At this point, what difference could it possibly make?"
==
For reference, here's part of Hawaii Revised Statutes HRS §11-113; Presidential Ballots:
(c) All candidates for president and vice president of the United States shall be qualified for inclusion on the general election ballot under the following procedures:......
(1) In the case of candidates of political parties which have been qualified to place candidates on the primary and general election ballots, the appropriate official of those parties shall file a sworn application with the chief election officer not later than 4:30 p.m. on the sixtieth day prior to the general election, which shall include:
(A) The name and address of each of the two candidates;
(B) A statement that each candidate is legally qualified to serve under the provisions of the United States Constitution;
(C) A statement that the candidates are the duly chosen candidates of both the state and the national party, giving the time, place, and manner of the selection.
posted by SF at
1:30 AM
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