Kamala Harris is eligible for the presidency, despite false claims
Soofia Tariq
July 22, 2024
WHAT WAS CLAIMED
Kamala Harris is ineligible to run for US president.
OUR VERDICT
False. Ms Harris is eligible.
AAP FACTCHECK – False claims about US Vice President Kamala Harris have emerged online after she became the Democrats’ likely presidential nominee.
Social media posts claim Ms Harris is ineligible to run for US president because she’s not a “natural born citizen”.
This is false. The vice president was born in California and is eligible to run.
“Kamala Harris is not a natural born citizen”, one Facebook post claims.
“Article II of the Constitution specifies that “[n]o person except a natural born citizen…shall be eligible to the office of President.”
It adds: “Her father was (and is) a Jamaican national, her mother was from India, and neither was a naturalized U.S. citizen at the time of Harris’ birth in 1964.
“That, makes her not a “natural born citizen”—and therefore ineligible for the office of the President.”
Dr. Kathryn Schumaker, senior lecturer in American Studies at the United States Studies Centre, told AAP FactCheck that “there is no legal basis for the truthfulness of such a claim”.
She points to the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution which states that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside”.
“This unquestionably applies to Kamala Harris, who was born in California,” Dr Schumaker says.
She adds that Article II of the Constitution does include the clause that the president must be a “natural born citizen”, which has been subject of disputed interpretations over the years.
“But it clarifies that the president must be ‘a citizen of the United States,’ which Vice President Harris clearly is because she has birthright citizenship,” Dr Schumaker says.
“As someone who studies race and the law, it is unsurprising to me to see these claims pop up about a non-white candidate, as they did during the campaign and later presidency of Barack Obama.”
Dr John Hart, a US politics expert and former head of the Australian National University’s political science department, says the claim is “an absolutely absurd assertion”.
“There is no issue over her eligibility to be President. Where her parents were born is constitutionally irrelevant,” Dr Hart says.
Presidential candidates must also be at least 35 years old, and have lived in the country for at least the past 14 years.
Ms Harris is 59, having been born on October 20, 1964.
It’s also clear she has lived in the country for more than 14 years, having been district attorney in San Francisco from 2004 to 2011, attorney general of California from 2011 to 2016, and serving in the US Senate from 2017 to 2021 before becoming vice president.
Other social media posts attribute a nonsensical quote to Ms Harris.
However, the purported quote is false and videos showing her saying the quote are manipulated.
“Kamala Harris Today is today and yesterday was today yesterday. Tomorrow will be today tomorrow. So, live today so the future today will be as the past today’s, as it is tomorrow,” during a speech,” several Facebook posts read.
“Please … ! your going have (sic) this running the country God help us VOTE REPUBLICAN.”
AAP FactCheck found a video of Ms Harris appearing to say this quote at a rally, but at a slow pace and with slurred words.
A reverse image search shows the original speech Ms Harris gave at a rally for in April 2023.
This video does not show Ms Harris saying the quote attributed to her, nor is it in the official White House transcript from the event.
A photo claiming to show Ms Harris smiling next to paedophile Jeffrery Epstein has also been posted online.
The photo has been manipulated.
AAP FactCheck did a reverse image search and found the original, which was taken by Getty Images and shows Ms Harris with her husband Douglas Emhoff at a dinner in Los Angeles in 2015.
Other fact checkers have also previously debunked this claim. (AAP)
