(States Twitter)-On June 12, 2008, Obama's campaign responded to the rumors by posting on the "Fight The Smears" website, an image of Obama's birth certificate.
The image released on the website is scan of a laser printed document obtained from and certified by the Hawaii Department of Health on June 6, 2007. It is a "Certification of Live Birth", sometimes referred to as a short form birth certificate. It contains less information than the longer "Certificate of Live Birth", which Hawaii no longer issues. Asked about this, Hawaiian Department of Health spokeswoman Janice Okubo stated that Hawaii "does not have a short-form or long-form certificate".
In releasing the certificate, the Obama website declared that the rumors "aren't actually about that piece of paper — they're about manipulating people into thinking Barack is not an American citizen".The campaign also provided the Daily Kos blog with a copy of the document. Referring to this release, National Review columnist Jim Geraghty, wrote on June 12, 2008:
...this document is what he or someone authorized by him was given by the state out of its records. Barring some vast conspiracy within the Hawaii State Department of Health, there is no reason to think his original birth certificate would have any different data.
Frequent arguments of those questioning Obama's eligibility are that he has not released a photocopy of his "original" or "long form" birth certificate, but rather a redacted "short form" version. It has also been claimed that the use of the term "certification of live birth" on the document means it is not equivalent to a "birth certificate". These arguments have been debunked numerous times by media investigations, every judicial forum that has addressed the matter, and Hawaiian government officials—a consensus of whom have concluded that the certificate released by the Obama campaign is indeed his official birth certificate. The director of the state Department of Human Health confirmed that the state "has Sen. Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures". The short form is "prima facie evidence of the fact of birth in any court proceeding".
Rejection by conspiracy theorists
The release of the certificate resulted in a fresh round of questions. It was asserted that the certificate had been digitally forged with Adobe Photoshop and lacked a stamped seal of the state, which led them to demand that Obama release his "original" 1961 birth certificate. Jerome Corsi, author of the book The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality, told Fox News that "the campaign has a false, fake birth certificate posted on their website... it's been shown to have watermarks from Photoshop. It's a fake document that's on the Web site right now, and the original birth certificate the campaign refuses to produce." This view was rejected by the state authorities, the media and independent fact-checking organizations. FactCheck.org viewed the Obama campaign's hard copy of the candidate's Certification of Live Birth and concluded:
FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate. We conclude that it meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving U.S. citizenship. Claims that the document lacks a raised seal or a signature are false. We have posted high-resolution photographs of the document as "supporting documents" to this article. Our conclusion: Obama was born in the U.S.A. just as he has always said.
Joshua Wisch, a spokesman for the Hawaii attorney general's office, stated in 2011 that the original Certificate of Live Birth kept in the archives of the Hawaii Department of Health is "... a Department of Health record and it can't be released to anybody", including President Obama. Wisch added that state law does not authorize photocopying such records.
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