The Independent View: Who Decides If Ted Cruz is Eligible to Be President?

Who gets to decide whether Ted Cruz is eligible to be President? A court?

But before we even get to a court, consider that at least three bodies other than courts get to decide whether Cruz is eligible in the event he secures the Office of President.

First, Voters
The people, after all, get to vote for their preferred candidate. And the voters may reject a candidate whom they believe is not eligible for Federal office. Voters may have refused to vote for Barack Obama, believing he was secretly a citizen of Kenya; John McCain, believing he was not “natural born” because his birth occurred in the Panama Canal Zone; or Mr. Cruz.

Second, Presidential Electors
In Presidential elections, voters cast ballots for slates of Presidential electors. Electors then vote for the President and Vice President. Electors must often pledge to support a particular candidate, and there is a complicating unresolved dispute as to whether a state may compel electors to vote for a Presidential candidate, that’s an entirely different discussion. But “faithless” electors do cast votes for candidates other than those whom they ostensibly support.

Third, Congress
At the end of the election, after the Presidential electors have cast their ballots, Congress counts the ballots. Congress likely has the discretion to reject the votes of electors if Congress concludes that a candidate is ineligible.

But this potential court case is a little different from others.

At the time of Cruz's birth in 1970, his mother had dual citizenship, U.S. and Canada. His father had dual citizenship, Cuba and Canada. So Cruz was 50% Canadian, 25% Cuban, and 25% a U.S. citizen through his mother.

Eleanor Darragh, mother of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) was born in Delaware on Nov. 23, 1934, establishing her citizenship by birth, her son was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, on Dec. 22, 1970.

I wonder what the courts would decide under this new condition?

UPDATE
The Cruz campaign told Breitbart News on Friday that Cruz’s mother had never become a Canadian citizen. “She was in Canada on a work permit and never became a permanent resident, let alone a citizen,” said Jason Johnson, chief strategist for the Cruz campaign. “She never registered to vote and never applied for Canadian citizenship.”

In a subsequent statement to Breitbart News, Johnson added:

“Eleanor was never a citizen of Canada, and she could not have been under the facts or the law. In short, she did not live in Canada long enough to be a Canadian citizen by the time Cruz was born in 1970: Canadian law required 5 years of permanent residence, and she moved to Canada in December 1967—only 3 years before Senator Cruz’s birth.”

The campaign could not provide her Canadian work permit.

UPDATE 2
In 1974, Cruz's parents are listed on a Canadian Federal voter list from 1974. Since only Canadian citizens are permitted to vote in Federal elections there, the presence of Cruz's parents' names on the list raises the possibility that they may have been Canadian citizens at one time.

But since Cruz was born in 1970, what happened after might not matter.