Ms Brewer said the bill gave too much power to a top state
election official
The governor of
Arizona has vetoed a bill requiring presidential candidates to prove
US citizenship in order to get on the state's election ballot.
Republican Jan Brewer said the bill would have allowed officials
to judge who is eligible to run for office.
A lingering "birther" conspiracy theory asserts US President
Barack Obama was not born in the US and is thus ineligible to hold
the office.
But the bill's Republican backers insisted it was not aimed at Mr
Obama.
The Arizona legislature was the first to pass such a law.
It would have allowed the state's top election official, the
secretary of state, to determine whether candidates met citizenship
requirements to hold the office of president.
"I do not support designating one person as the gatekeeper to the
ballot for a candidate, which could lead to arbitrary or politically
motivated decisions," Ms Brewer said in a statement.
She was secretary of state until she became governor in 2009.
Mr Obama, seen here with his Kenyan
father, was born in Hawaii and spent his youth there and in
Indonesia
The US constitution requires the president be a "natural born
citizen", a clause widely interpreted to mean born in the US or in
some cases to US citizens abroad.
Mr Obama has released a
certificate of live birth showing he was born in the US state of
Hawaii, where officials vouch for its authenticity.
But the "birthers" claim Mr Obama was born in Kenya, his father's
place of birth, or perhaps in Indonesia, where he spent several
years as a child.
The bill would have required national political parties to submit
affidavits affirming their presidential candidates are "natural
born" citizens and to provide a "long form birth certificate"
listing the name of the hospital and the attending physician.
If the candidate did not possess that document, the candidate
could provide a baptismal or circumcision certificate, hospital
birth record, mother's post-partum medical record or early census
record.
"I never imagined being presented with a bill that could require
candidates for president of the greatest and most powerful nation on
earth to submit their 'early baptismal circumcision certificates'
among other records to the Arizona secretary of state," Ms Brewer
said.
The birther conspiracy has simmered at the fringes of American
politics since before the 2008 presidential election, despite
repeated assertions by Hawaiian officials that Mr Obama's birth
certificate plainly states he was born in the US state.
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