Another defeat for the hapless birther movement: President Barack Obama will be on the November election ballot in Kansas.
All three Republican members of the State Objections Board voted today allow Obama to be listed as a candidate for re-election, despite the protest of California lawyer/dentist Orly Taitz, one of the most prominent birthers in the country.
The board’s action came four days after Joe Montgomery of Manhattan, Kansas, filed a complaint, saying he believed Obama was not a natural born U.S. citizen and therefore was ineligible to qualify for re-election. But Montgomery withdrew his objection on Friday because of what he called intimidation directed at him and people around him.
When Taitz showed up at today’s meeting, State Objections Board member Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach told her the deadline to file an objection had passed.
Kobach and fellow board members Attorney General Derek Schmidt and Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer voted to close the matter without making a ruling about the president’s citizenship. However, State Election Director Brad Bryant told TPM that the board added a certification of Obama’s place of birth that Hawaii sent Kansas over the weekend into the record before bringing the matter to a close.
While a crucial victory of principle, today’s decision probably won’t do Obama much good in the upcoming election. Kansas, with six electoral votes, is considered a solid Romney red state. And it has gone Republican in every presidential election since 1968. And even though Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was born in Wichita (her parents were also born in Kansas), he lost the state to John McCain in 2008 by 15-points.
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