Still looking for that birth certificate

[mikefocke]

AZ law that says supply an original birth certificate or don't be on the ballot. It kinda doesn't define original does it. Since the original certificate is in the state archives and never leaves there no one will be able to comply. Everything else is a copy or a certified copy (which is what the certificate of Obama is that they are showing on TV). Sometimes in some states a certificate (often issued by the state's Dept of Health) is a photocopy, sometimes a typed certificate, sometimes a handwritten certificate, now most often computer generated. For my kids born in VA I think I've seen all 3 kinds.

It is almost as if the lawmakers have a hospital certificate in mind which is nothing but a souvenir, it isn't a birth certificate in the legal sense.

I'm trying to remember all the blanks on our DC forms and if they met all the criteria for witnesses signatures that the proposed AZ law is said to require. I don't think so. I do remember that the forms changed over the years with the older 1890s certificates having little info and being filled out by the midwife, doctor or mother while the 1960s forms were in two parts and the second part about the health aspects of the mother and birth were separated from the birth certificate and used for public health statistical studies. You weren't allowed to reassemble the two parts into one document for privacy/legal reasons. And those certificates were mostly typed but occasionally we'd get a back seat of a taxicab certificate and I'm sure those would lack the required number of witness signatures. I'm presuming these forms by the '60s were pretty uniform state to state.

Please lawmakers do some homework before offering silly legislative proposals. Base them on facts and the law, not emotion.

[tonycarreon]

can we shut up about this now? - no of course not. for some people, it doesn't matter what evidence is provided, or it would have been settled 2 1/2 years ago.

Originally Posted by Brucelee

Watch you tone. You can question things like this w/o being "nuts!"

*the full image:

[mikefocke]

a scan of the top of the 1960's forms that most health departments were using around that time. (I worked in the DC Dept of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics during that time period during the summers).

Even this is only a picture of the original, not the original itself. And only the top part of the form as the bottom part was removed and used for statistical analysis and only contained health data relating to the parents in any case.

A typical procedure would be for the birth to occur, a hospital worker to interview the mother and then type up the certificate, then the typed certificate to be brought to the mother for signature, then routed to the doctor for signature, then sent to the Dept of Public Health where the number in the top right would be assigned via a rubber stamp. Then an entry would be made in an index to allow a search to reveal the file number that would allow retrieval of the certificate. The dates in this picture seem to show that that process flow was followed.

Recall that in those days we didn't use computers so everything was done by hand. In our office, even the index was a hand written ledger book about 30 by 30 inches alphabetized by the last name so you'd go to the Smith page and then look by the dates and then look up the certificates in paper books where they were filed in the order they were received by the year and certificate number.

All of that information has been extracted and computerized now and I have no idea if they retained the original paper after digitizing everything. I would hope they did as I know the handwritten ones were a devil to decipher and sometimes we would huddle around with a magnifying glass debating the spelling of a word. Sometimes we had to use the applicants guidance to help us interpret the writing.

I say all this to provide some background for those not familiar with the processes back then and to say that it does look consistent with practices at the time.

[Stroked & Blown]

It was modified: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eOfYwYyS_c

[Johnny Danger]

I thought that he was born in Switzerland . Isn't that him on the far left ?