Five Georgia men have challenged President Barack Obama’s inclusion on next year’s presidential ballot, with at least some citing an oft-discredited theory that Obama is not eligible for office because the Constitution says that a president must be a “natural born citizen.”
All the challenges have been made through the Georgia Office of the Secretary of State, which referred them to the state administrative hearings office. Hearings have not yet been set.
Georgia holds its primary next year on March 6. Obama's name will appear on the Democratic primary ballot, even though he has no challengers.
Two of the men filing the challenges, Kevin Powell of Duluth and Carl Swensson of Morrow, are being represented in their efforts by attorney Mark Hatfield, who is also a Republican state lawmaker from Waycross.
Hatfield failed in an effort earlier this year to pass a law prohibiting any presidential or vice presidential candidate from being included on the ballot without proof of “natural born” citizenship.
Obama was born in Hawaii to an American mother and Kenyan father.
Hatfield has said he believes the United States’ founders intended not only for presidents to be born in the U.S. but for their parents to also have been U.S. citizens.
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