CLAIM: As distinguished from a "long-form" Certificate of Live Birth, the "short-form" Certification of Live Birth issued by Hawaii and posted online by the Obama campaign isn't a "real" or "valid" birth certificate.
EXAMPLE:
Personal message from a reader dated Oct. 28, 2008:
[T]he Obama campaign did finally present a document which they claimed validated his eligibility (per the Constitution of the United States, Article II, Section I) as a "Natural born citizen" to have his name on the ballot in contention for the office of the President of the United States of America. However, contrary to what the few media outlets who are giving this outrageous claim any attention at all have concurred, what the Obama campaign supplied was not, in fact, a "birth certificate". What they supplied was actually a "Certificate of Live Birth." There is a major difference between a "birth certificate" and a "Certificate of Live Birth." Aside from the level of detail differentiating the documents (hospital of record, doctor, height, weight, etc) - in the state of Hawaii, one authenticates natural born citizenship, and the other doesn't.
STATUS: FALSE. According to both the Hawaii state government website and a June 6, 2009 article in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, the computer-generated Certification of Live Birth is the only kind of birth record now issued by the state (original records are stored electronically), so the distinction between "short-form" and "long-form" is moot. When a citizen of Hawaii requests a certified copy of his or her birth certificate from the state, a Certification of Live Birth — what people are calling the "short-form," and what Obama released to the public — is what they get. According to Hawaii Health Department spokesperson Janice Okubo, a COLB contains "all the information needed by all federal government agencies for transactions requiring a birth certificate."
You can check a bunch of these factcheck sites that say the same thing. Obama's first document established his citizenship. That's why it's not a valid comparison to Romney only releasing one year of taxes so far. Nobody is disputing the authenticity of what Romney has released thus far, it's just so little. Considering the job he's applying for, shouldn't we get more?
