The Oakland Tribune reports this morning that “lawyers for John McCain and the state and national Republican Party on Thursday asked a federal judge in San Francisco to dismiss a lawsuit challenging the candidate’s place on California’s Nov. 4 ballot.” American Independent Party Chairman-Elect Markham Robinson “sued McCain, the GOP and California Secretary of State Debra Bowen on Aug. 11, arguing the presidential candidate’s birth 72 years ago today in the Panama Canal Zone means he’s not a ‘natural-born citizen.'”
However, “lawyers for the GOP and McCain wrote Thursday that Robinson lacks standing to sue and is asking the courts to tread where the Constitution forbids. Robinson hasn’t shown McCain’s candidacy causes him any harm, they said: He’s neither a presidential candidate himself nor authorized to sue on behalf of his party or party nominee Alan Keyes, and stripping McCain from the ballot won’t much improve the party’s or Keyes’ chances of winning.”
Yes, why doesn’t Markham Robinson ask Alan Keyes to join him as a co-plaintiff? Alan Keyes certainly owes a lot to Markham Robinson and Mark Seidenberg; he wouldn’t be on the California ballot without their help. This is not a sarcastic comment; I am sincere.
If this lawsuit might fail because it was filed by an ordinary citizen who does not have standing to bring such a suit, then perhaps someone who IS on the ballot as a presidential candidate in at least one state should bring a similar suit.
Alternatively, since the Nov. 4 election is actually for the choosing of presidential electors, an elector candidate from an opposing slate might be the proper party to bring such a lawsuit.
In U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), “Chief Justice FULLER, with whom concurred Justice HARLAN, dissenting‖
“Thus, the fourteenth amendment is held to be merely declaratory, except that it brings all persons, irrespective of color, within the scope of the alleged rule, and puts that rule beyond the control of the legislative power.
“If the conclusion of the majority opinion is correct, then the children of citizens of the United States, who have been born abroad since July 28, 1868, when the [Fourteenth] amendment was declared ratified, were and are aliens, unless they have or shall, on attaining majority, become citizens by naturalization in the United States; and no statutory provision to the contrary is of any force or effect x x x.â€
“In my judgment, the children of our citizens born abroad were always natural-born citizens from the standpoint of this government. If not, and if the correct view is that they were aliens, but collectively naturalized under the acts of congress which recognized them as natural born, then those born since the fourteenth amendment are not citizens at all unless they have become such by individual compliance with the general laws for the naturalization of aliens, because they are not naturalized ‘in the United States.’â€