Chiyome Fukino (former Director of Hawaii Public Health Department) had this to say about how “birthers” would respond to the release of Obama’s “long-form” birth certificate:
“They’re going to question the ink on which it was written or say it was fabricated,” said Fukino. “The whole thing is silly.”
Let’s start with the ink, shall we?
From Hawaii Public Health Regulations. Title: Vital Statistics, Registration & Records. Chapter 8, Certificates of Vital Statistics Events, Section 1:
Preparation. Certificates of vital statistics events are to be filled in by typewriter or in ink. If ink is used only permanent ink will be acceptable. All signatures are to be made with permanent ink.In all other respects, the certificates shall comply with provisions of Section 57-14, R.L.H. 1955.
On April 27, 2011, Barack Obama revealed what his representatives said was a photocopy of his original long-formCertificate of Live Birth from Hawaii (as posted on the White House blog website). The signatures on this Certificate of Live Birth are required to be made in permanent ink.
The truth is in the pixels
Download the Certificate of Live Birth document off the White House blog website2 and open it in Adobe Illustrator. Now zoom in on the signature of Obama’s mother.
Stanley Ann Dunham Obama Signature
The pixels reveal that only a portion of the signature is in ink as required by Hawaii Public Health Regulations.
Figure 1: The Dunham part of the signature of Obama’s mother on the alleged long-form, original Certificate of Live Birth, posted on the White House blog website. Here it has been downloaded into Adobe Illustrator. Click to enlarge.
The Ann and the D in Dunham are in ink. The pixels are a variety of gradations in grays and blacks, like ink signature pixels are.
Figure 2: Zooming in on the top part of the D in Dunham. You can see the variation in color pixels–variations of grays to black tones. This is how pixels of a signature should appear when a signature is applied with ink and then scanned. Click to enlarge.
But what’s really interesting is that the rest of the signature, ‘unham Obama’, is not in ink.3 The letters are a solid greenish-black color with no gradation in color at all. This lack of gradation reveals that this part of the signature was created on a computer and is not even penmanship.
Figure 3: Focusing now on the start of the u next to the D in Dunham. You can see there is no gradation of color at all. A solid, dark greenish-black color displays no evidence of the gradation in color for these pixels, which implies that this “signature” was created with image-editing software and not with ink. Click to enlarge.
Figure 4: This last image focuses on the O in Obama and part of the b. You can see there is no color change in the pixels. The solid pixel color again suggests that the signature was not scanned or representative of ink. The Obama portion of the signature was computer generated. Click to enlarge.
The Stanley Ann Dunham Obama signature is forged on this “document”.
What’s it called when you forge a signature on a Certificate of Live Birth from Hawaii?
FORGERY!
Well, that would be my top pick, but hey! They also violated Hawaii Public Health Regulations by not usingpermanent ink in their forgery! Maybe that’ll tick someone off.
So, yes, “birthers” do “question the ink” and say that Obama’s Certificate of Live Birth was “fabricated.” But it’s far from “silly.”