Kansan Withdraws Obama Ballot Challenge
This conspiracy monger pretends it’s due to intimidation, but proffers no proof of threats. I suspect it’s due to the limelight his kookery has cast upon him and the fact that he is now a national laughing stock. It’s more probable that several semi sane realpolitik Republicans are burning up his phone lines explaining how stupid this makes all Republicans and the whole state of Kansas look. President Obama would probably like to thank Joe Montgomery for being another highly visible example of wingnuttery, and the aid that gives to his election chances.
The real question is how far the far right circus will have to go before they certify that our President can be on the ballot in Kansas. This is something you would expect to see in Missouri, not Kansas, but that was in saner days.
A Manhattan resident who objected to President Barack Obama’s name being on the November ballot in Kansas withdrew his challenge Friday.
Joe Montgomery said he thinks angry phone calls to his office and home were designed to intimidate him.
“There has been a great deal of animosity and intimidation directed not only at me, but at people around me, who are both personal and professional associations,” Montgomery wrote to Secretary of State Kris Kobach in an email. “I don’t wish to burden anyone with more of this negative reaction, so please immediately withdraw any action on this objection.”
Montgomery, a communications coordinator at the College of Veterinary Medicine at Kansas State University, told The Wichita Eagle that he expects the state’s Board of Objections, which heard his complaint Thursday, to drop the issue.
Kobach’s office said it hasn’t decided how to proceed yet. It still has a meeting tentatively scheduled for 10 a.m. Monday in Topeka.
“Once an objection has been filed, the board has to meet, and there are two possible outcomes: uphold or deny,” said Brad Bryant, the deputy assistant secretary of state for elections.
The board had requested information from at least two other states — Arizona and Mississippi — that have faced a similar issue.
Montgomery had argued that Obama shouldn’t be on the Kansas ballot because he wasn’t born to two parents who were both citizens. Obama’s father wasn’t a citizen, he said.
Montgomery declined to specify who beyond himself had received angry phone calls and messages. He said he has been deleting messages left at his office as soon as he realizes they’re related to his personal political activity.
“It’s not like physical intimidation,” he told The Eagle. “It’s just being abusive with the kinds of messages.”
More at the New York Times