The fringe Birther Movement is apparently alive and well in the Republican-leaning state of Kansas.
Three of the state’s top elected Republicans say they are still awaiting further evidence as to President Barack Obama’s birth records before deciding whether to remove him from the November presidential ballot.
The State Objections Board, which is comprised of Secretary of State Kris Kobach, Attorney General Derek Schmidt and Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer, has postponed until Monday any possible action on a complaint filed by a Manhattan resident pending review of a copy of Obama’s birth certificate from Hawaii.
“I don’t think it’s a frivolous objection,” Kobach told the Topeka Capital-Journal. “I do think the factual record could be supplemented.”
Requests were to be sent to officials in Hawaii, Arizona and Mississippi in an attempt to secure copies of the president’s birth records. Hoping to put the matter to rest once and for all, Obama released a copy of his birth certificate last year, one that was verified as official by the Republican governor of Hawaii.
But detractors persist in advancing their “birther” arguments that charge that the Democratic incumbent lacks legitimacy.
Senior Republican Party leaders have largely kept their distance from the group, worried that the birthers’ extremist views will scare off the critical moderate and undecided voters needed in November.
Removal of Obama’s name in Kansas — a state certain to side with Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney — would be all the more bizarre, given that the president’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, and maternal grandparents, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham, were Kansas natives.
“My Kansas roots run deep,” Obama said during a trip to the state in December.
Joe Montgomery, who filed the ballot challenge with the all-Republican panel, alleges that Obama is ineligible to hold the nation’s highest office because his father held both British and Kenyan citizenship.
Montgomery pointed to a handful of U.S. Supreme Court cases to support his claim a presidential candidate must be a “natural born citizen” from two American citizens.
“As for Mr. Obama’s citizenship, there are many doubts,” he told the newspaper. “Doing the right thing can be hard and unpopular.”
A legal representative of Obama submitted a letter arguing the complaint had no merit.
No representative of the Kansas Democratic Party attended the hearing in a Topeka auditorium.
Montgomery, who works at the College of Veterinary Medicine at Kansas State University, said Obama hadn’t provided valid documentary evidence to establish his birth in the United States.
In his written complaint, Montgomery sounded like the kind of conspiracy theorist that would make movie maker Oliver Stone proud by declaring “there is substantial evidence showing that much of Mr. Obama’s alleged birth certificates have been forged or doctored, and have not been confirmed as legally valid, true and accurate.”
