Comments on: Legally, a woman can’t be elected president

By: John

John — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 09:59:56 +0000

Wrong. Technically, the Constitution does require a male to hold the office of President. Here are the relevant passages of article two of the Constitution.

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“The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice-President chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows:”

“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.”

“The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.

Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:”

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Notice the explicit use of “he” and “his” in the passages of article two of the Constitution. Also, notice the explicit use of “person” in the same article. Therefore, it stands to reason that if they meant that a man or woman could become president they would have used “person” instead of “he” and “his” in article two of the Constitution.

By: Jon

Jon — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 08:37:56 +0000

It wouldn’t result in a Republican Vice Presidency. At worst, it would be result in no majority in the VP vote, which means the Senate, currently 50-49 + Lieberman and likely to tip further towards the Democrats in November, would choose between the top vote-getters.

By: Bilbo

Bilbo — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 08:27:42 +0000

That just means that the New York Electors can’t vote for both Hillary and Bill. Electors in other states could. New York Electors could vote for Hillary and some arbitrary individual who wasn’t a resident of New York. Electors have voted for people who weren’t candidates before, notably in 1960 when southern Democratic Electors refused to vote for Kennedy. Ralph Nader has run with different VP candidates in different states. It would be unpleasant, though, if the race were close enough that such a vote resulted in a Hillary presidency with a Republican Vice President.

It’s Article 2, section 1, actually and that paragraph has been replaced by Amendment 12 which, happily enough, has essentially the same language in its first sentence.

By: Karl

Karl — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 06:43:30 +0000

Let's try that link again: http://www.uscis.gov/citizenship

By: Karl

Karl — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 06:42:07 +0000

The phrase in the Constitution is “natural-born Citizen”; being born to two American citizens is sufficient for that, regardless of location, as is being born anywhere that’s considered American soil. You may even be mistaken that your daughters, as naturalized citizens, are ineligible. A law passed in 2000 promises them immediate citizenship; the courts will have to decide which of the two categories that falls into.

The summary on the US Immigration Services site boils it down pretty well:

By: Richard

Richard — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 03:50:10 +0000

Unfortunately, the criteria for eligibility for running for President is not that the person be a US citizen, but that he or she be born in the US. THis means that my two daughters, adopted as infants from Guatemala, who have grown up in the US as US citizens since the age of 6 months, are not eligible to run for President. This certainly isn’t fair. For a year there we thought Arnold Schwarzeneger was trying to change this requirement to allow himself to run (not a run I would support)–at least that would have made it possible for me to tell my daughters that some day they too could grow up to be the President, but unfortunately I can’t make that claim.

By: steve

steve — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 20:31:50 +0000

As for a Bill and Hillary swap, the 12th Amendment says:
“But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.”

Well, if you want to nitpick…it doesn’t say that Bill would be ineligible to the office of President. Just that he would be ineligible to be elected president.

By: John

John — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 20:30:41 +0000

Of course Art 2, sec 3 also requires – The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two persons, of whom one at least shall not lie an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. – Therefore the Hillary/Bill scenario could not happpen unless Bill moved back to Arkansas.

By: John Seigel

John Seigel — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 19:11:26 +0000

The masculine form he has traditionally been the singular gender neutral pronoun for the english language.

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 18:40:14 +0000

Whoever wrote this article should do some checking before they put this crap out.
Good point made by “bup.” Statutes/constitutions/treaties etc use the word “he” with the meaning of he/she. This is first year law school stuff. Just look at the criminal codes of your state, it probably uses the word “he” when referring to someone committing a crime. Does this mean that women can’t be convicted of a crime?

As far as the issue with John McCain goes, it doesn’t matter where he was born. As long as both of his parents are United States Citizens, then he is a United States Citizen.

By: gwagener

gwagener — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 17:08:53 +0000

John McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone, but the zone was US territory when he was born, so he still qualifies as a natural born citizen. If Obama had been born before 1959 in Hawaii, but after Hawaii became a US territory, he would still qualify as anatrual born citizen. People born in Puerto Rico, American Simoa, US embassy and cousulute property, or US military bases outside the US still qualify as natural born citizen.

By: bup

bup — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 15:31:49 +0000

The qualifications for senator also include the pronoun he, so I guess Hillary's not a senator either.

By: hardcle

hardcle — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 12:27:21 +0000

Article II, Section I also says:
“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.”

No mention of gender there.

As for a Bill and Hillary swap, the 12th Amendment says:
“But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.”

So that couldn’t happen.

As for race, there’s no constitutional requirement that the President be a white male. The only qualifications are as I’ve noted above.

By: Jason Burroughs

Jason Burroughs — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 12:23:18 +0000

I honestly doubt that that simply because the constitution reads “he” instead of “he/she,” that a court ruling would be necessary to affirm that a woman could be president–it is proper English to use the word “he” in that grammatical context, not “she” or “he/she,” both of which are inventions of the twentieth century feminist movement. This does make sense, however, since society in the late eighteenth century was very male-centric.

By: Bechamel

Bechamel — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 11:57:31 +0000

*If* the U.S. wants to be the laughing stock of the world? Didn’t eight years of George W. Bush accomplish that quite nicely already?

/American
//Not proud of that fact