Why the Electoral College?
I found this letter at AmericasRight.com posted as a comment. I thought every elector should read this letter. Very concise and easy to understand.
November 22, 2008
Honorable Secretary of State Gale,
On November 21, 2008, I had a conversation with your associate, Nate, about the eligibility of Barack Hussein Obama to serve as POTUS. She asked that I write to you as well as contact the office of the Attorney General on this matter.
According to the Constitution of the United States of America, a person is eligible to serve as POTUS if and only if he or she meets three requirements, those being as follows:
1. be a natural born citizen of the United States
2. be at least 35 years old
3. have lived in the U.S. for at least 14 years
Section 1 of Article II of the Constitution contains the clause:
“ No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States."
Barack Hussein Obama meets requirements #2 & 3 but not #1. All three are requirements, not suggestions under the Constitution.
Even if Obama were to produce a Hawaiian birth certificate, he was, in fact, a British subject at the time of his birth due to his father’s citizenship status as a Kenyan. Obama admits this point on his web site, Fight the Smears:
“When Barack Obama Jr. was born on Aug. 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Kenya was a British colony, still part of the United Kingdom’s dwindling empire. As a Kenyan native, Barack Obama Sr. was a British subject whose citizenship status was governed by The British Nationality Act of 1948. That same act governed the status of Obama Sr.’s children.”
The Electoral College is important for two reasons. First, for small states like Nebraska, we are protected from being “run over” by large states. The second reason is not as well known, but given the current political circumstances, absolutely prescient. The Founding Fathers worried that a charismatic, manipulative person might “turn the heads” of the electorate. To prevent the masses from making a fatal error, the Electoral College, people with cooler heads and a commitment to the Constitution, could prevent a crisis.
The Founding Fathers specifically insisted on a “natural born citizen” to avoid electing to the Presidency a person of divided loyalties, that is to say a foreigner whose priority might not be the best interests of America herself.
Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers:
“It was equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations. It was also peculiarly desirable to afford as little opportunity as possible to tumult and disorder. This evil was not least to be dreaded in the election of a magistrate, who was to have so important an agency in the administration of the government as the President of the United States. But the precautions which have been so happily concerted in the system under consideration, promise an effectual security against this mischief.”
Therefore, rather than supposing that human nature has changed in 200 odd years and that the Electoral College is now just a quaint notion, it is for exactly this sort of circumstance that America has been well served with the Electoral College system.
The Electoral College is the mechanism which could now prevent a Constitutional Crisis. If the Electoral College were to turn its head, intimidated by the election of a charismatic, historic person who just happens to have broken the “color barrier” and allow a fraud, an unqualified person to ascend to the Presidency would set a precedent from which we could never recover.
Indeed, if the Electoral College allowed an unqualified person to be elected POTUS, would not our entire form of government be compromised? Would the laws passed be valid? Or the treaties entered into?
Clearly, the “free” press was not unbiased in this election, removing from the American people the information so desperately needed to come to a full picture of the candidates in this race.
Americans deserve at least to have the Constitution upheld, and to that end, I am requesting that the Electoral College, the office of the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, and the Governor for the State of Nebraska, along with anyone else who has responsibility in this matter step up to the plate and safeguard the rights of the electorate. Time is of the essence as regards this matter.
Thank you for you time and attention to this matter.
This is ALL you need to know on the subject. Obama is NOT eligible to serve as POTUS. Whether anyone will do anything about it is doubtful. However, I sent the letter because if it comes up in the future, they cannot say they had no knowledge, which they said when I first contacted them.