Ariz. electors revive birther questions

Skepticism about President Obama's birthplace been categorically debunked time and time again, but a handful of Arizona Republicans continued to beat the birther drum yesterday, when officially casting their ballots for president in the Electoral College.

Of Arizona's 11 Republican Electoral College members, three - including state GOP chair Tom Morrissey - tried to revive debates yesterday about whether or not Mr. Obama is an American citizen, according to Arizona's KNAU public radio. Republican Mitt Romney won the state's popular vote in the November election, so the Republicans were not casting their votes for Mr. Obama anyway.

Still, they apparently felt compelled to share their distrust of his birth certificate.

"I am signing this document with concern about the legitimacy of the birth certificate that I have seen presented by Barack Hussein Obama,'' Morrissey said. "I'm not satisfied with what I've seen...I think for somebody in the president's position to not have produced a document that looks more legitimate, I have a problem with that."

Republican elector Don Ascoli, meanwhile, expressed doubts that Mr. Obama was "properly vetted as a legitimate candidate for president," according to the Associated Press.

Mr. Obama has been sporadically dogged by these racially-tinged claims since his 2008 presidential bid, despite the fact that his birth certificate has been publicly available since June 2008. Among the so-called "birthers" who continue to propagate conspiracy theories about the president's birthplace include Donald Trump, the television personality and former surrogate for Mitt Romney himself.

In 2011, when Trump was purportedly weighing his own presidential bid - a move many believed to be a publicity stunt aimed at pumping up ratings for his reality television show - he reiterated the claims with such fervency that the president responded to calls to release his long-form birth certificate.

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, a conservative Republican who has butted heads with the president on a number of issues, made it clear yesterday she doesn't share the opinions of the state's birther-friendly electors.

"The bottom line is everybody's entitled to their own opinion. And I happen to disagree," she said after the ceremony.