New York State Birth Certificate Request Form: Fill & Download for Free

He actually didn’t. While he was under no obligation to do so he did release this document in June of 2008 prior to his election:Birth certificates issued to the public generally aren’t copies of an “original.” Basically when you go to the health department they refer to the documentation they have in a dusty old book and generate a new certificate on request using the current technology. Each issued document issued by the Health Department is considered to be an original.It is customary that the parents get a document shortly after the birth that can be considered the “original.” Mine, done a year prior to Mr. Obama’s birth in New York County, was done using a primitive form of copying that provided a negative image of the original document prepared by the hospital but if I went to get one today it would be completely different, generated by a laser printer on a pristine new form by the Health Department. I’m sure that Mr. Obama would have a similar experience.Many people objected to this Certificate of Live Birth claiming it wasn’t “original.” I think we can rest assured that whatever paper his mother got half a century ago was long lost or misplaced by a woman who lived all over the world. Might be there somewhere but if you go to the state Health Department you don’t get a facsimile of that document but a new “original” certified by the state. People weren’t satisfied with what President Obama provided and demanded that he provide the “original.”The State of Hawaii stood by their document as issued. Mr. Obama had to hire a lawyer to get a facsimile of the bound record in the state archives. Here is that document as produced by the State of Hawaii in April of 2011:This facsimile, produced by the Health Department of the State of Hawaii, was personally witnessed and certified as accurate by the Director, Loretta Fuddy, and Dr. Alvin Onaka, the State Registrar.Of course as one would expect there was an immediate uproar about the authenticity of the document despite the endorsements.The bottom line is Mr. Obama went to extraordinary means to make sure the public had access to his birth information in an accurate, verifiable and certified manner to an extent never before expected by any Presidential candidate. He did this early and whenever he provided a document it was challenged on spurious grounds. Quite a shame and a waste of time.Needless as it is to say the calumny and lack of respect shown to Mr. Obama and the State of Hawaii, especially the questioning of the validity of the document produced in June of 2008, was unprecedented. That nonsense continues to this day, which is also unfortunate. Mr. Obama and the professional archivists of the State of Hawaii are entitled to the same kind of respect and consideration that any one of us would expect.

Top Ten Reasons I’m Against Voter ID Laws:Most of the people affected are poor and brown, and many are old, or quite young. They do not have cars or driver’s licenses.Driving and flying are privileges. Voting is a Constitutional right, meaning that the absolute minimum number of obstacles should be placed in the path of those wishing to do it.The state legislatures decide, often very arbitrarily, which forms of ID will be acceptable.In states where there are a lot of students, for example, Republican legislators have chosen to exclude student ID cards as valid forms of identification, even when issued by a state university (in other words, “government issued ID cards”).In at least one state, after a new voter ID requirement was established, the state shut down the DMV offices in more than half of the majority-black counties.It’s expensive to get a new ID. In many cases it requires buying a copy of your birth certificate from the private contractor who handles vital records requests for the county of your birth, then paying on top of that the fee for a state non-driver ID. In at least one case I know of, a county courthouse burned down with all the paper records, and a whole generation of people can’t access their birth certificates anymore. The more affluent ones can hire attorneys for appeals and alternatives. Not the poor.Even in states where they don’t shut down DMV offices that are near the brown-skinned population, those offices have limited hours and are still some miles away from the people who need them, and who don’t have cars to get there, so they need a ride both ways, often with hours of waiting in between.When I was 18, my parents took me in, vouched for me as their child, and I registered to vote in Maryland. In New York, in DC, and then in Oregon, I signed affidavits that I was a citizen in order to register. At the polling places there were huge logbooks of all registered voters in the precinct. Every time you voted you signed the book. If your signature matched, you got a ballot. If your signature did not match, they gave you a provisional ballot. No ID required at the polling place.Many of those affected have lived in the same towns their whole lives. The election volunteer ladies know them. They have voted in their towns without ID for decades.ALL OF THIS IS BEING DONE, ostensibly, to curb a form of voter fraud that is so rare as to be nearly nonexistent: voter impersonation. In California in 2018 they established that in the entire state six people voted who were not citizens (because the state misclassified them). That’s six out of more than 20,000,000 voters. The Brennan Center keeps good stats on this.https://www.quora.com/q/political-clarity/Before-Republicans-Conservatives-talk-about-background-checks-for-buying-guns-why-won-t-the-left-Democrats-support/comment/851435

Only if not only the ID was free, but the government-issue documents that it requires to issue the ID were also free.As in, free certified copies of birth certificates or naturalization papers, free postage to send them, etc.Of course, the government could also obviate that expense, by simply asking the State Dept of state Bureau of Vital Statistics that issued the required documents to verify that their records showed they had indeed been issued. I don’t understand any need for one bureaucrat to send a physical piece of paper to the applicant just so the applicant can show it to another bureaucrat.For instance, for me to renew my State of Florida drivers license, I had to ask the State of New York for a certified copy of my birth certificate, which meant filling out a form telling New York the details of my birth so they can print a new copy and send it to me. This cost me $10 and took weeks. Why couldn’t the State of Florida ask me for the details of my birth and submit that electronically to the State of New York, requesting official confirmation electronically that such a birth was on file? Why are we still using 19th century technology for this?